Nurit Greenger
May 29, 2009
The narcissism, elitism and arrogance of this administration towards Israel is incomprehensible, unacceptable and must be stopped. Obama is diligently working with and for the Arabs with no clue of right from wrong, reality or myth; like the Arabs, Obama thinks that Israel is the culprit—Leftists always blame the evil on the victim—and she must give, give, give, and the Arabs who want and want must be given, given and given all they want. This is the picture Israel is facing:
Obama and Clinton, tutored by their own chosen ignorance, denial of truth and bizarre acceptance of the Arabs lies along with Obama’s Islamist trends and his zealous desire to appease the Muslims are pointing political spears and daggers at Israel.
“Natural Growth”: Obama and Clinton decided that Jews are not entitled to live comfortably or have large families that can all live in the same village or town. If Israeli families, who settled in Judea and Samaria, expanded over the past forty years from a father, a mother and three children, to become approximately sixty family members, in Obama and Clinton’s mind they are forbidden of adding more rooms in their homes, so each family member can lives comfortably, or build more homes to accommodate their entire clan—this is called natural growth. Israel needs to ask Obama if he will be permitted to demand and apply such policy in the USA. Will Obama tell Israel next how many children each Israeli family is allowed to have?
Israel cannot and must not cave into this most offensive and disparaging demand of the USA administration to stop all building homes for Jews in Judea and Samaria that are needed due to the “natural growth” of each family! This may be called anti-Semitism of some sort
Obama wants to see full halt to settlements—not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions: Settlements—shmettlements; all existing settlements in Judea and Samaria that have been in existence for more than five years must remain and flourish. If, in the near of far future, Israel and the Arabs can arrive at some agreement that will not undo Israel’s right to secured borders, the Israelis and the Arabs can then negotiate what land the Arabs will live on and what land the Jews will live on. Right now, Samaria and Judea is the Land of Israel and Jews are allowed to live on each inch-centimeter of this land.
The PA, with full support from Obama are adamant that they will not negotiate with Israel unless Israel meets the ‘halt all settlements’ demand: When was the last time the PA have met any demand the International Community have assigned them to meet and they agreed to? Never! The PA has nothing to sell to Israel and Israel has nothing it wants to buy from the PA. Israel is the Seller not the Buyer and the PA must begin getting accustomed to this. Therefore Israel must not capitulate to the PA demands and must stop feed the hand that is standing ready to kill Israelis’ in each way possible, with any concessions or appeasements until the PA show they deserve Israel’s listening ear.
Last year, Condoleezza Rice, at that time still U.S. Secretary of State, reversed American policy and defined as a “settlement” the neighborhood of Har Homa, which has the same legal status as the French Hill, Talpiot, Ramot and Gilo. All of these neighborhoods were annexed to Jerusalem nearly 30 years ago but are not recognized by the international community as part of the capital: Who is Israel lying to but itself? The international community does not openly recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, not even the USA. There is not one foreign Embassy and very few Consulates in Jerusalem. It is most egregious and obnoxious of the USA to interfere in another sovereign country’s internal policy as if the USA has a legal mandate in Israel. Israel, not the USA, must decide what land belongs to her and where Jews can or cannot live. After all, the entire land, west of the Jordan River, is the legal Land of Israel and not one inch legally belongs to an Arab. The land the Arabs live on was and is stolen from Israel and they live on it illegally.
Obama is still delusional thus he has hopes that a “Land for Peace” agreement will end the 100-year-old Zionist-Arab conflict: Obama thinks that Israel has not learned what he refuses to learn. The concept ‘land for peace’ has brought about more war unto Israel and more loss of Israeli lives. The Israeli citizen will not allow such concession to take place again; they are already well learned on this verse. Besides there is no more land to concede as Israel gave back to the Arabs 90% of the land she gained in 1967. So Israel must ask Obama: what land you refer to? Is it Tel Aviv or is it Tel Aviv and Haifa?
Abbas completely dependents on the United States to remain in power he no longer has much of among the Fatah people. His Arab slimy character worked hard and was successful to appeal to Obama’s listening ear now firmly behind him. Abbas does not insist on the return of five million Arabs into Israel. However, he does not say how many Arabs he would ‘insist’ to be allowed into Israel. He also says that he is not trying to “destroy Israel”: Destroy Israel…not now because he cannot but given a chance he will. How do we know this? Abbas rejects Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s demand that the PA recognize Israel as a Jewish state. If it is not a Jewish State, then what is it…in the future, if Abbas has his way, an Arab state? Obama did not ask Abbas to define what type of state he sees Israel to be now and in the future .
Abbas will not resume direct talks with Israel because Netanyahu refuses to immediately accept the principle of creating a PA state on the land of Judea, Samaria and Gaza: is there a base for such state with the irrevocable guarantee that this state will not end up being a extension of Hamastadn or a Fatahstan that will work endlessly to destroy Israel? No such guarantee because the Arabs’ underlined goal is to gain as much land, carved out of Israel, so they can cause more havoc on Israel from the nearest border line.
Abbas [of course] adopts Obama’s idea of a ‘regional peace‘; an overall agreement that will include the return of Golan Heights to Syrian sovereignty: where was Israel when these two agreed on all this? Isn’t right that Israel should be allowed to negotiate and agree on its own providence? These two—one is a president of a country and the other one is a leader of a terror organization and a Holocaust denier—behave as if Israel is nothing but a name, not a sovereign nation and a member of the International Community that it is. Israel is the only country in the world that every other foreign leader sees fit to muddle in its affairs. It is time that Israel takes a stand and disallows any nation, even not the USA, to muddle in its affair, as it is responsible and capable enough to do so all by itself.
Now, when the Arab world has their man in the White House, this little Jordanian King Abdullah II is raising his bar demanding that Israel must accept the Saudi 2002 Plan offer that, if met by Israel, it will ‘finally be recognized by the 56-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which includes Iran: who this Abdullah is kidding? How delusional can one be? What is he smoking or taking? More so, Amr Mussa, the Arab League secretary declared that the monarch simply misunderstood the gist. The OIC is not prepared to wave the Israeli flag over their capitals as Obama has [dreamt] suggested. Why don’t they all coordinate their insane declarations?
The Obama administration, supported by the mass media, is continuously failing to mention how miserably the PA failed to meet any, even one, of the previous American demands, such as halting incitement against Israel: why does Israel have to cave in and meet one demand? Israel must make it clear to the world that this unilateral business has come to final end; cease and desist. The more toughness Israel shows, the less it will be pestered.
Since Obama works for the Arabs, he accepted most of the PA demands, including Israeli surrender of the Old City of Jerusalem: who manages Israel? Obama or the Israeli government elected by the Israel citizens? Obama can hardly manage his own country therefore Israel must make it clear to him to stay away from her affairs.
Finally, Obama has to learn to separate the Israeli-Arab conflict, regional peace and Iran’s fast progressing nuclear ambitions: like Israel, the Arab nations and the Western world fear that Iran might use nuclear capability to dominate the Muslim world if not more that just the Muslim world. If a nuclear bomb hits Israel it will not discriminate a Jew from an Arab; they will all die. And then there will be no more Israeli-Arab conflict Obama is so pre occupied with but a major world in trauma for him to deal [or not to deal] with. Is this what Obama is seeking; to destroy the world? He is sure heading this way!
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Saturday, May 30, 2009
ISLAM: THE WAR THAT WON’T GO AWAY
Dr. Paul L. Williams
May 28, 2009
We are engaged in a war.
It is a very old war - - a war that began when the Prophet Muhammad delivered these final instructions to his followers.: “Know that every Muslim is a Muslim’s brother, and that the Muslims are brethren; fighting between them should be avoided, and the blood shed in pagan times should not be avenged; Muslims should fight all other men until they say, ‘There is no god but Allah.
By 635, three years after the Prophet’s death, the Muslim horde had invaded the Byzantine Empire and conquered Damascus, the city where St. Paul was headed when he received a blinding vision of the Resurrected Christ. Antioch, the ancient Greek city where the followers of Christ were first called Christians, fell next. In 636, the Muslims conquered the Christian city of Jerusalem. The caliph Umar stood in triumph over the site of Solomon’s Temple, where the Prophet Muhammad, according to Islamic tradition, once ascended into Paradise.
By 642, the Muslims had swept through the Fertile Crescent, including Syria and Persia (modern day Iraq), slaughtered the Egyptian armies, and spread throughout North Africa. Over 250 Christian churches were destroyed in Egypt. The blood-lust of the Muslims remained unabated even when they encountered little or no resistance.
The conquered Christians and Jews became reduced to the status of dhimmitude. As dhimmis, Christians and Jews were required the pay the obligatory jizyah - - suppression tax - - which was often so exacting that many converted to Islam rather than pay it. Dhimmis also were compelled to submit to the following disabilities:
Dhimmis are not to build any new places of worship.
Dhimmis are not to repair any old places of worship which have been destroyed by the Muslims.
Dhimmis are not to prevent Muslim travelers from staying in their places of worship.
Dhimmis are to entertain for three days any Muslim who wants to stay in their homes, and for a longer period if a Muslim falls ill,
Dhimmis are not allowed to harbor any hostility towards the Islamic state, or give any aid or comfort to hostile elements.
Dhimmis are not to prevent anyone - - not even a family member or fellow dhimmi - - from converting to Islam.
Dhimmis are to show respect to every Muslim.
Dhimmis must allow Muslims to participate in their private meetings.
Dhimmis must not dress like Muslims.
Dhimmis are not to name themselves with Muslim names.
Dhimmis are forbidden to ride horses with saddle and bride.
Dhimmis are forbidden to bear arms.
Dhimmis must not wear signet rings or seals on their fingers.
Dhimmis must not sell or drink liquor.
Dhimmis must wear distinctive dress which displays their inferior status and which separates them from true believers.
Dhimmis must not propagate their customs among Muslims.
Dhimmis must not build their houses in the neighborhood of Muslims.
Dhimmis must not bring their dead near the graveyards of Muslims.
Dhimmis are not to observe their religious practices publicly or mourn their dead loudly.
By 732, the Islamic horde had conquered Crete, Cyprus and Rhodes; pushed on to overrun Spain; and crossed the Pyrenees into France, where Charles Martel, “the Hammer of the Franks,” managed to force them into retreat at the Battle of Tours. Regarding this battle, Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, wrote at the end of the 18th Century:
A victorious line of march had been prolonged by the Muslim invaders above a thousand miles from the Rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire: the repetition of equal space would have carried the Muslims to the confines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland; the Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or the Euphrates and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Qu’ran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Muhammad.
The Muslims continued to dominate the Iberian Peninsula for the next seven hundred and fifty years. Held in check by the West, the Muslim army continued to sweep east, conquering Syria, northwest India, the Sindh and Punjab regions of modern Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkistan, Java, Borneo, and eventually the Philippines.
Because the Muslims considered Hindus pagans who were not entitled to the rights of the dhimmis, they treated them with a brutality that remains unmatched in the annals of human history. The historian Sita Ram Goel records that the Muslim invaders of India paid no respect to the codes of warfare that had been established for centuries:
Islamic invaders came with a different code - - the tradition of the Prophet. It required its warriors to fall upon the helpless civilian population after a decisive victory had been won the battlefield. It required them to sack and burn down villages and towns after the defenders had died fighting or had fled. The cows, the Brahmins, and the Bhikshus invited their special attention in mass murder of non-combatants. The temples and monasteries were their special targets in an orgy of pillage and arson. Those whom they did not kill, they captured and sold as slaves. The magnitude of the booty looted even from the bodies of the dead was a measure of the success of the military mission. And they did all this as mujahids and ghazis in the service of Allah and the Last Prophet.
The long Islamic march was stayed when the Seljuk Turks began to invade Muslim lands at the time of the millennium. The Turks eventually converted to Islam, transformed almost overnight from a barbarian horde to righteous Shiite warriors, and pressed forward through Asia Minor to Constantinople, the eastern capitol of the Holy Roman Empire and sacred center of Eastern Christian Orthodoxy.
In 1092, Pope Urban II summoned the French nobles to a Church council in a field at Clermont in an effort to ward off the Islamic conquest of Asia Minor and Eastern Europe - the effort became known as the Crusades.
The Crusades, which lasted for nearly four hundred years, came to an end on Tuesday, May 29, 1453 when the Ottoman Turks conquered the Byzantium capital of Constantinople. The Muslim soldiers slew everyone they met in the streets, men, women, and children without discrimination. The blood ran in rivers down the steep streets from the heights of Petra toward the Golden Horn. When the slaughter and the pillaging was over, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II ordered an Islamic scholar to mount the high pulpit of Hagia Sophia, the great cathedral of Eastern Christianity, and declare that there was no God but Allah and that Muhammad was his prophet. The magnificent cathedral was transformed into a mosque; hundreds of other churches within Constantinople suffered the same fate. Thousands of Christians were murdered or suppressed to the status of dhimmis; 50,000 women and children were hauled off as slaves.
Throughout the subsequent centuries, the Muslim expansion continued as the Ottoman hordes swept through much of the Ukraine. The Turks were at the gates of Vienna when they were stopped by the great Polish king John Sobieski and thirty thousand Polish hussars on a day that marked the high point of the Islamic expansion in Europe: September 11, 1684. It was a date that became embedded in the psyche of radical Islam - - a day of infamy that could only be offset by a day of triumph. That day would come exactly 318 years later on September 11, 2001.
What was the goal of this seemingly endless warfare? The answer can be found in the words of the Prophet, who commanded his followers “to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is his messenger.” The large scale jihads came to end after 1683, not because the people of Islam had rejected or reformed their doctrine of universal submission, but rather because the Muslim world had grown too weak and too poor to continue the struggle. Commenting on the history of Islam, Teddy Roosevelt wrote the following in 1916:
Christianity is not the creed of Asia and Africa at this moment solely because the seventh century Christians of Asia and Africa had trained themselves NOT to fight, whereas the Moslems were trained to fight. Christianity was saved in Europe solely because the peoples of Europe fought. If the peoples of Europe in the seventh and eighth centuries, and on up to and including the seventeenth century, had not possessed a military equality with, and gradually a growing superiority over the Moslems who invaded Europe, Europe would at this moment be Muslim and the Christian religion would be exterminated. Wherever the Mohammedans have had complete sway, wherever the Christians have been unable to resist them by the sword, Christianity has ultimately disappeared. From the hammer of Charles Martel to the sword of Sobieski, Christianity owed its safety in Europe to the fact that it was able to show that it could and would fight as well as the Moslem aggressor.
The situation within Islam underwent a dramatic change with the discovery of oil in the Arabian Peninsula and the infusion of billions of petro dollars into impoverished Muslim lands. Everywhere on planet earth, Muslims were on the march to establish a new world order under the dictates of shariah. Violence in the name of Allah erupted in such diverse places as Medea. Algeria; Karachi, Pakistan; Yala, Thailand; Bresje, Kosovo; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Beirut, Lebanon; Mombassa, Kenya; Kashmir, India; Casablanca, Morocco; Numan, Nigeria; Grozny, Chechnya; Antwerp, Belgium; Toulouse, France; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Makhachkala, Dagestan; Moscow, Russia; Tashkent, Uzbekistan; Cairo, Egypt; Montreal, Canada; Manila, the Philippines; Natore, Bangladesh; Limgheti, Mauritania; Baku, Azerbaijan; Nagele, Ethiopia; Ruesselsheim, Germany; Amman, Jordan; Jala-Abad, Kyrgyzstan; Malmo, Sweden; Gaza, Palestinian Authority; Inchkhe, Dagestan; Doha, Qatar; Shanghai, China; Karabulak, Ingushetia; and Dafur, Sudan. In addition to the events of 9/11, some of the more significant incidents of Islamic barbarity are as follows:
March 2002, Israel- Three bombs, independently planned but all timed to coincide with the Passover festival. One hits a Passover dinner at a hotel in Netanya, killing 20 people. Another in Tel Aviv kills 29 and a suicide bomber attacks an Arab-owned restaurant in Haifa and kills 14.
October 12 2002, Bali, Indonesia - Car bombs outside nightclubs popular with foreign tourists kill 202 people, 91 of them Australians. An Indonesian Islamist group with Al-Qaida links is blamed.
October 23 2002, Moscow, Russia -Chechen gunmen and women take over a theatre and hold everyone inside hostage. They later shoot dead several of the hostages. Russian troops use gas to subdue the hostage takers, and kill 50 of them. However, the gas also kills 179 of the hostages.
May 12 2003, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - Suicide bomber attacks on residential compounds inhabited by westerners kills 34 people. Al-Qaida blamed.
May 16 2003, Casablanca, Morocco - Five bombs targeted at Jewish and western people in the city kill 41, mostly Moroccans. Six Europeans also die.
November 20 2003, Istanbul, Turkey - Truck bomb attacks on the British Consulate and the HSBC bank kill over 60 people, including the British consul general in the city.
March 11 2004, Madrid - Explosions aboard four commuter trains arriving at Atocha station during the morning rush hour. Bombs were in backpacks, and detonated using a mobile phone, killing 191 people and injuring 1,800. Spanish government of Jose Maria Aznar at first suggests the Basque separatist group Eta is to blame, but later concedes the attacks were the work of Islamists.
September 1 - 3 2004, Beslan, Russia - Islamist gunmen take over 1,000 hostages, mostly children, at a school in North Ossetia. After a three-day siege many of the hostages are killed in an explosion in the school gym, after which Russian troops storm the building. The final death toll is over 330, many of them children. 800 more are injured.
July 7, 2005, London, England - Four suicide bombers struck in central London on Thursday 7 July, killing 52 people and injuring more than 770. The coordinated attacks hit the transport system as the morning rush hour drew to a close. Three bombs went off at or around 0850 BST on underground trains just outside Liverpool Street and Edgware Road stations, and on another traveling between King’s Cross and Russell Square. The final explosion was around an hour later on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square, not far from King’s Cross.
November 26, 2008, Mumbai, India – A group of Islamic fanatics launch 10 coordinated attacks in India’s financial capital, killing 173 people and injuring 308.
In the wake of 9/11, scores of jihadi attacks against American civilians have been thwarted. The list includes plans to set off a radiological device in midtown Manhattan; to collapse the Brooklyn Bridge with blow-torches; to bomb the New York Stock Exchange; to detonate explosives near Madison Square Garden on the eve of the Republican National Convention; to launch attacks on hospitals, medical facilities, and food chains throughout the country; to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago; to kill U.S. troops at Fort Dix; and to incite the jet-fuel artery that runs through the JFK International Airport. Other attacks were brought to fruition. John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo - - better known as “the Beltway Snipers” - - became two of most successful homegrown jihadis by launching15 sniper attacks, which killed ten people and critically wounded three others in the Washington, D.C. area. Their arrests did little to end the murders in the name of Allah as horrific incidents continued to mount, including the slaughter at the Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City.
The war on terror - - a misnomer from the start - - is being lost. Since 9/11, 13,270 Islamic terror attacks have been launched from China to Seattle, Washington, leaving 80,000 people dead and over 120,000 injured. Yet government officials, including Barack Obama, continue to speak of Islam as the religion of peace, Protestant ministers (including Robert Schuller and Rick Warren) insist that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, and Roman Catholic pontiffs continue to kiss the Qu’ran.
It’s time for all good men and women to take a firm stand against Islam and the forces of evil.
It’s time to take part in the last crusade.
.
'Palestinians expect Obama peace push will unseat Netanyahu'
Haaretz Service
Palestinian Authority officials expect U.S. pressure on Israel to restart the peace process will slowly force Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from office, the Washington Post reported on Friday.
The article quotes an unnamed Palestinian Authority official as saying that "it will take a couple of years" but in the end, the pressure to comply with U.S. demands as well as Netanyahu's desire not to alienate his right-wing coalition partners will force him to step down as prime minister. The article quotes Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as saying that "The Americans are the leaders of the world," adding "they can use their weight with anyone around the world. Two years ago they used their weight on us. Now they should tell the Israelis, 'You have to comply with the conditions.'"
According to the Washington Post, Abbas said that former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert 'accepted the principle' of the right of return for Palestinian refugees, adding that during a meeting he presented him with a map showing a Palestinian state on 97 percent of the West Bank.
In the article, Abbas is quoted as saying that "I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements," adding "until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality...the people are living a normal life."
U.S. President Barack Obama has repeatedly expressed his support for a two-state solution and has called for a total freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank.
Obama held talks with Abbas at the White House on Thursday, ten days after he hosted Netanyahu. Obama said after the meeting that he would continue to push Netanyahu, who has expressed his resistance to a settlement freeze and the two-state solution.
Palestinian Authority officials expect U.S. pressure on Israel to restart the peace process will slowly force Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from office, the Washington Post reported on Friday.
The article quotes an unnamed Palestinian Authority official as saying that "it will take a couple of years" but in the end, the pressure to comply with U.S. demands as well as Netanyahu's desire not to alienate his right-wing coalition partners will force him to step down as prime minister. The article quotes Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as saying that "The Americans are the leaders of the world," adding "they can use their weight with anyone around the world. Two years ago they used their weight on us. Now they should tell the Israelis, 'You have to comply with the conditions.'"
According to the Washington Post, Abbas said that former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert 'accepted the principle' of the right of return for Palestinian refugees, adding that during a meeting he presented him with a map showing a Palestinian state on 97 percent of the West Bank.
In the article, Abbas is quoted as saying that "I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements," adding "until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality...the people are living a normal life."
U.S. President Barack Obama has repeatedly expressed his support for a two-state solution and has called for a total freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank.
Obama held talks with Abbas at the White House on Thursday, ten days after he hosted Netanyahu. Obama said after the meeting that he would continue to push Netanyahu, who has expressed his resistance to a settlement freeze and the two-state solution.
OC:The Truth About ObamACORN
Michelle Malkin
Left-wing groups in Washington, D.C., are panicked. The New York Times and other Team Obama whitewashers are downplaying the connection between the Obama presidential campaign, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and Obama's old employer Project Vote (ACORN's nonprofit canvassing arm). Alas, the truth keeps seeping out. At a closed-door powwow hosted Thursday at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, activists discussed how to combat a relentless stream of corruption charges from ACORN/Project Vote whistleblowers. But it's too late for a reputation bailout. Former Project Vote official and whistleblower Anita MonCrief has harnessed the Internet to crowd-source a massive cache of documents showing ties between Obama staff members and the supposedly "nonpartisan" ACORN operations.
Last fall, The New York Times abandoned an investigation into whether Obama had shared donor lists with Project Vote, a 501(c)(3) organization that is prohibited from engaging in political activity. Public editor Clark Hoyt earlier this month called it "the tip that didn't pan out." Critics suggested the donor lists could have been compiled through public records. But I have obtained the lists -- not only of Obama donors, but also lists of Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry contributors. The records include small donors to the Obama campaign, who are not disclosed in public campaign finance databases. It's information only a campaign could supply.
MonCrief testified under oath last fall that her then-boss, Karyn Gillette, gave her the Obama donor list and told her the campaign had furnished it. Moreover, e-mail messages between ACORN, Project Vote and other affiliates, including ACORN subsidiary Citizens Services, Inc. (CSI), make explicit references to working on "Obama campaign related projects." The "list of maxed out Obama donors" is specifically mentioned in staff e-mail. Another message from ACORN/Project Vote official Nathan Henderson-James warns ACORN and affiliated staff to prepare for "conservatives … gearing up a major oppo research project on Obama."
Henderson-James wrote, "Understand I'm not suggesting that we gear up to defend a candidate's campaign." But that, of course, is exactly what the ACORN enterprise did.
Why does this matter? Transparency, tax dollars and electoral integrity. ACORN's own lawyer Elizabeth Kingsley acknowledged last year that a vast web of tax-exempt ACORN affiliates were shuffling money around -- making it almost impossible to track whether campaign rules and tax regulations were being followed. ACORN receives 40 percent of its revenues from taxpayers. Americans deserve to know whether and how much commingling of public money with political projects has occurred over the last four decades -- and what role the Obama campaign played in this enterprise.
Remember: Last August, the Obama team admitted its failure to properly disclose $800,000 in payments to CSI -- which works hand in hand with Project Vote and the ACORN parent organization. Obama mysteriously reclassified the campaign advance work expenditures as "get-out-the-vote" activities. Nary a peep from electoral integrity watchdogs.
Despite heated denials from Team Obama, the links between ACORN, Project Vote and CSI are inextricable. As Obama himself reminded ACORN leaders after its political action committee endorsed his presidential candidacy in February 2008:
"I come out of a grassroots organizing background. That's what I did for three and half years before I went to law school. That's the reason I moved to Chicago was to organize. So this is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it. I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work."
As I've reported before, the Obama campaign's "Vote for Change" registration drive, run simultaneously with ACORN/Project Vote, was an all-out scramble to scrape up every last unregistered voter sympathetic to Obama's big-government vision.
In an e-mail message to whistleblower MonCrief last summer, New York Times reporter Stephanie Strom told the truth: "The real story to all this is how these myriad entities allow them to shuffle money around so much that no one really knows what's getting spent on what." By Oct. 6, 2008, Strom had thrown in the towel in the wake of blistering phone conversations with the Obama campaign. She wrote:
"I'm calling a halt to my efforts. I just had two unpleasant calls with the Obama campaign, wherein the spokesman was screaming and yelling and cursing me, calling me a right-wing nut and a conspiracy theorist and everything else. … I'd still like to get that file from you when you have a chance to send it. One of these days, the truth is going to come out."
It's only just begun.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Michelle Malkin is the author of "Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild. Feedback: editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org.
Left-wing groups in Washington, D.C., are panicked. The New York Times and other Team Obama whitewashers are downplaying the connection between the Obama presidential campaign, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and Obama's old employer Project Vote (ACORN's nonprofit canvassing arm). Alas, the truth keeps seeping out. At a closed-door powwow hosted Thursday at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, activists discussed how to combat a relentless stream of corruption charges from ACORN/Project Vote whistleblowers. But it's too late for a reputation bailout. Former Project Vote official and whistleblower Anita MonCrief has harnessed the Internet to crowd-source a massive cache of documents showing ties between Obama staff members and the supposedly "nonpartisan" ACORN operations.
Last fall, The New York Times abandoned an investigation into whether Obama had shared donor lists with Project Vote, a 501(c)(3) organization that is prohibited from engaging in political activity. Public editor Clark Hoyt earlier this month called it "the tip that didn't pan out." Critics suggested the donor lists could have been compiled through public records. But I have obtained the lists -- not only of Obama donors, but also lists of Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry contributors. The records include small donors to the Obama campaign, who are not disclosed in public campaign finance databases. It's information only a campaign could supply.
MonCrief testified under oath last fall that her then-boss, Karyn Gillette, gave her the Obama donor list and told her the campaign had furnished it. Moreover, e-mail messages between ACORN, Project Vote and other affiliates, including ACORN subsidiary Citizens Services, Inc. (CSI), make explicit references to working on "Obama campaign related projects." The "list of maxed out Obama donors" is specifically mentioned in staff e-mail. Another message from ACORN/Project Vote official Nathan Henderson-James warns ACORN and affiliated staff to prepare for "conservatives … gearing up a major oppo research project on Obama."
Henderson-James wrote, "Understand I'm not suggesting that we gear up to defend a candidate's campaign." But that, of course, is exactly what the ACORN enterprise did.
Why does this matter? Transparency, tax dollars and electoral integrity. ACORN's own lawyer Elizabeth Kingsley acknowledged last year that a vast web of tax-exempt ACORN affiliates were shuffling money around -- making it almost impossible to track whether campaign rules and tax regulations were being followed. ACORN receives 40 percent of its revenues from taxpayers. Americans deserve to know whether and how much commingling of public money with political projects has occurred over the last four decades -- and what role the Obama campaign played in this enterprise.
Remember: Last August, the Obama team admitted its failure to properly disclose $800,000 in payments to CSI -- which works hand in hand with Project Vote and the ACORN parent organization. Obama mysteriously reclassified the campaign advance work expenditures as "get-out-the-vote" activities. Nary a peep from electoral integrity watchdogs.
Despite heated denials from Team Obama, the links between ACORN, Project Vote and CSI are inextricable. As Obama himself reminded ACORN leaders after its political action committee endorsed his presidential candidacy in February 2008:
"I come out of a grassroots organizing background. That's what I did for three and half years before I went to law school. That's the reason I moved to Chicago was to organize. So this is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it. I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work."
As I've reported before, the Obama campaign's "Vote for Change" registration drive, run simultaneously with ACORN/Project Vote, was an all-out scramble to scrape up every last unregistered voter sympathetic to Obama's big-government vision.
In an e-mail message to whistleblower MonCrief last summer, New York Times reporter Stephanie Strom told the truth: "The real story to all this is how these myriad entities allow them to shuffle money around so much that no one really knows what's getting spent on what." By Oct. 6, 2008, Strom had thrown in the towel in the wake of blistering phone conversations with the Obama campaign. She wrote:
"I'm calling a halt to my efforts. I just had two unpleasant calls with the Obama campaign, wherein the spokesman was screaming and yelling and cursing me, calling me a right-wing nut and a conspiracy theorist and everything else. … I'd still like to get that file from you when you have a chance to send it. One of these days, the truth is going to come out."
It's only just begun.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Michelle Malkin is the author of "Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild. Feedback: editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org.
Hitler's European Holocaust Helpers
SPIEGEL Staff
The Germans are responsible for the industrial-scale mass murder of 6 million Jews. But the collusion of other European countries in the Holocaust has received surprisingly little attention until recently. The trial of John Demjanjuk is set to throw a spotlight on Hitler's foreign helpers.
He's been here before, in this country of perpetrators. He saw this country collapse. He was 25 at the time and his Christian name was Ivan, not John; not yet.
Ivan Demjanjuk served as a guard in Flossenbürg concentration camp until shortly before the end of World War II. He had been transferred there from the SS death camp in Sobibor in present-day Poland. He was Ukrainian, and he was a Travniki, one of the 5,000 men who helped Germany's Nazi regime commit the crime of the millennium -- the murder of all the Jews in Europe, the "Final Solution."
PHOTO GALLERY: EUROPEAN COLLUSION IN THE HOLOCAUST
Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (7 Photos)
He was part of it, if only a very minor cog in the vast machinery of murder. Ivan Demjanjuk stayed in post-war Germany for seven years before he emigrated to the US in 1952 with his wife and daughter on board the General Haan. Once he arrived, he changed his name to John. His time as a supposed DP or "displaced person," as the Anglo-American victors called people made homeless by the war, was over.
DP Demjanjuk had lived in the southern German towns of Landshut and Regensburg where he worked for the US Army. He moved to Ulm, Ellwangen, Bad Reichenhall, and finally to Feldafing on Lake Starnberg. Feldafing belongs to the area covered by the Munich district court, which is why Demjanjuk has been sitting in Munich's Stadelheim prison since he was deported from the US last week. His cell measures 24 square meters, which is extraordinarily spacious by usual prison standards.
Last Big Nazi Trial in Germany
He faces charges of aiding and abetting the murder of at least 29,000 Jews in Sobibor. The trial could start in late summer, provided Demjanjuk, now almost 90, is deemed fit to stand trial. Witnesses will be called to testify, but none of them will be able to identify him. The only evidence lies in the files, but that evidence is strong. Twice, in 1949 and 1979, former Travniki Ignat Danilchenko, who is now dead, stated that Demjanjuk had been an "experienced and efficient guard" who had driven Jews into the gas chambers -- "that was daily work."
Demjanjuk has denied this charge throughout. He says he was never in Flossenbürg or in Sobibor, never pushed people into the gas chambers. The ex-American has adopted the same tactic of denial as many other defendants who stood trial for war crimes after 1945.
DER SPIEGEL
The Holocaust in numbers.
But it's already clear that this last big Nazi trial in Germany will be a deeply extraordinary one because it will for the first time put the foreign perpetrators in the spotlight of world publicity. They are men who have until now received surprisingly little attention -- Ukrainian gendarmes and Latvian auxiliary police, Romanian soldiers or Hungarian railway workers. Polish farmers, Dutch land registry officials, French mayors, Norwegian ministers, Italian soldiers -- they all took part in Germany's Holocaust.
Experts such as Dieter Pohl of the German Institute for Contemporary History estimate that more than 200,000 non-Germans -- about as many as Germans and Austrians -- "prepared, carried out and assisted in acts of murder." And often they were every bit as cold-blooded as Hitler's henchmen.
Just for example, on June 27, 1941, a colonel in the staff of the Germany's Northern Army Group in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas passed a petrol station surrounded by a crowd of people. There were shouts of bravo and clapping, mothers raised their children to give them a better view. The officer stepped closer and later wrote down what he had seen. "On the concrete courtyard there was blonde man aged around 25, of medium height, who was taking a rest and supporting himself on a wooden club which was as thick as an arm and went up to his chest. At his feet lay 15, 20 people who were dead or dying. Water poured from a hose and washed the blood into a drain."
The soldier continued: "Just a few paces behind this man stood around 20 men who -- guarded by several armed civilians -- awaited their gruesome execution in silent submission. Beckoned with a curt wave, the next one stepped up silently and was (…) beaten to death with the wooden club, and every blow met with enthusiastic cheers from the audience."
Orgy of Murder Like a Lithuanian National Ceremony
When all lay dead on the ground, the blonde murderer climbed on the heap of corpses and played the accordion. His audience sang the Lithuanian anthem as if the orgy of murder had been a national ceremony. How could something like that happen? For a long time now, this question hasn't just been directed at the Germans, whose central responsibility for the horror is undisputed -- but also at the perpetrators in all countries.
What led Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu and his generals, soldiers, civil servants and farmers to murder 200,000 Jews (and possibly twice that many) "of their own accord," as historian Armin Heinen puts it. Why did Baltic death squadrons commit murder on German orders in Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine? And why did German Einsatzgruppen -- paramilitary "intervention groups" operated by the SS -- have such an easy time encouraging the non-Jewish population to wage pogroms between Warsaw and Minsk?
It's completely undisputed that the Holocaust would never have happened without Hitler, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler and the many, many other Germans. But it's also certain "that the Germans on their own wouldn't have been able to carry out the murder of millions of European Jews," says Hamburg-based historian Michael Wild.
It's a perception that many survivors never doubted. When the Association of Surviving Lithuanian Jews convened in Munich in 1947, they passed a resolution that bore an unmistakable title: "On the guilt of a large part of the Lithuanian population for the murder of Lithuania's Jews."
In the Third Reich with its well-functioning bureaucracy, there were comprehensive registers of the Jewish population. But in the territories conquered by the German army, Hitler's henchmen needed information of the type supplied in the Netherlands by registry offices whose staff went to a lot of trouble to compile a precise "Register of Jews."
And how would the SS and police have been able to track down Jews in the cities of Eastern Europe with their broad mix of ethnic groups if they hadn't had the support of the local population? Not many Germans would have been able "to recognize a Jew in a crowd," recalls Thomas Blatt, a survivor of Sobibor who wants to testify as a witness at Demjanjuk's trial.
At the time, Blatt was a blonde-haired boy and tried to pass for a Christian child in his Polish home town of Izbica. He didn't wear a yellow star and tried to appear self-confident when he ran into uniformed people. But he was betrayed a number of times -- the Germans paid for information on the whereabouts of Jews -- and he always escaped with a lot of luck.
Denunciation Was Common
Denunciation was so common in Poland that there was a special term for paid informants "Szmalcowniki" (previously a term for a fence). In many cases, the denouncers knew their victims. And while the French, Dutch or Belgians could submit to the illusion that the Jews deported to the east from Paris, Rotterdam or Brussels would be all right in the end, the people in Eastern Europe learned through the grapevine what lay in store for the Jews in Auschwitz or Treblinka.
For sure, many counter-examples can easily be found. A senior officer in Einsatzgruppe C, responsible for the murder of more than 100,000 people, complained that the Ukrainians lacked "pronounced anti-Semitism based on racial or ideological reasons." The officer wrote that "there is a lack of leadership and of spiritual impetus for the pursuit of Jews."
Historian Feliks Tych estimates that some 125,000 Poles rescued Jews without being paid for their services. It's clear that the perpetrators always made up a small minority of their respective population. But the Germans relied on that minority. The SS, police and the army lacked the manpower to search the vast areas where the Nazi leadership planned to kill all people of Jewish origin. Across the 4,000 kilometers stretching from Brittany in western France to the Caucasus, the Nazis were bent on hunting down their victims, deporting them to extermination camps or to local murder sites, preventing escapes, digging mass graves and then carrying out their bloody handiwork.
Of course only Hitler and his entourage or the army could have stopped the Holocaust. But this doesn't invalidate the argument that without the foreign helpers, countless thousands or even millions of the approximately six million murdered Jews would have survived.
In the killing fields of Eastern Europe, there were up to 10 local helpers for every German policeman. The ratio is similar in the extermination camps. Not in Auschwitz, which was run almost entirely by Germans, but in Belzec (600,000 killed), Treblinka (900,000 deaths) or in Demjanjuk's Sobibor. There, a handful of SS members were assisted by some 120 Travniki men.
Without them, the Germans would never have managed to kill 250,000 Jews in Sobibor, says former prisoner Blatt. It was the Travniki who guarded the camp, drove all the Jews from the railway wagons and trucks after their arrival in the camp, and who beat them into the gas chambers.
Was the Holocaust a European Project?
Such a stupefying number of victims raises disturbing questions, and Berlin historian Götz Aly already started asking them a few years ago: was the so-called Final Solution in fact a "European project that cannot be explained solely by the special circumstances of German history"?
Part 2: Many Foreign Perpetrators Acted Voluntarily
There is no final verdict yet on the European dimension of the Holocaust. The French and Italians started late -- when most of the perpetrators were already dead -- to deal comprehensively with this part of their history. Others, such as the Ukrainians and Lithuanians, are still dragging their feet; or they have only just begun, like Romania, Hungary and Poland.
Since 1945 the countries invaded and ravaged by Hitler's armies have seen themselves as victims -- which they doubtless were, with their vast numbers of dead. That makes it all the more painful to concede that many compatriots aided the German perpetrators.
In Latvia, local assistance was greater than anywhere else. According to the American historian Raul Hilberg, the Latvians had the highest proportion of Nazi helpers. T he Danes are at the other end of the scale. When the deportation of Denmark's Jews was about to begin in 1943, large parts of the population helped Jews to escape to Sweden or hid them. Some 98 percent of Denmark's 7,500 Jews survived World War II. By contrast, only nine percent of the Dutch Jews survived.
Does the Holocaust represent the low point not only of German history, but of European history as well, as historian Aly argues?
There is evidence challenging the widely-held notion that foreign perpetrators were forced to help the Germans commit murder. It's true that local helpers risked their lives by refusing to assist the German occupiers. That applied to the police units and civil servants in occupied Western Europe as much as it did to newly-formed auxiliary police in the east. But it's also true that in many places people volunteered to serve the Germans or participated in crimes without being forced to.
There is also the often-repeated claim that the governments of countries allied with Hitler had no choice but to hand over Jewish citizens to the Germans. That's not true either. The Balkan countries in particular quickly understood how important the "solution to the Jewish Question" was to Hitler and his diplomats -- and they tried to extract the highest possible price for their complicity.
There's also reason to doubt the assumption that the helpers were pathological sadists. If that were true, they should be easy to identify, for example within the group of 50 Lithuanians who served under the command of SS Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Joachim Hamann. The men would drive around the villages up to five times a week to murder Jews, and ended up killing 60,000 people. It only took a few crates of Vodka to get them in the mood. In the evenings the troop would return to Kaunas and boast of their crimes in the mess hall.
None of the Lithuanians had been criminals before. They were "totally and utterly normal," believes historian Knut Stang. Almost everywhere after the war, the murderers returned to their ordinary lives as if nothing had happened. Demjanjuk too was a law-abiding citizen. In Cleveland, Ohio, where he lived, he was regarded as good colleague and a friendly neighbor.
It's the same as with the German perpetrators. There's no identifiable type of killer -- that's a particularly disturbing conclusion reached by historians. The murderers included Catholics and Protestants, hot-blooded southern Europeans and cool Balts, obsessive right-wing extremists or unfeeling bureaucrats, refined academics or violent rednecks.
Among them was Viktor Arajs (1910-1988), a learned lawyer from a Latvian farming family who commanded a unit of more than 1,000 men that murdered its way around Eastern Europe on behalf of the Nazis. Or the Romanian Generaru, son of a general and commander of the ghetto in Bersad in Ukraine, who had one of his victims tied to a motorbike and dragged to death.
Anti-Semitism Was Rife Across Europe
And anti-Semitism? In the 1930s, anti-Semitism grew across Europe because the upheaval after World War I and the global economic crisis had unsettled people. In Eastern Europe, the tendency to regard Jews as scapegoats and to try and exclude them from the job market was especially strong. In Hungary, Jews were banned from public office at the end of the 1930s and were forbidden to work in a large number of professions. Romania voluntarily adopted Nazi Germany's racist and anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws. In Poland, many universities restricted access for Jewish students.
The extent of the hatred of Jews is also reflected in the fact that after the end of the war in 1945, mobs in Poland killed at least 600, and possibly even thousands of Holocaust survivors. However, excessive nationalism appears to have been the more important factor, at least in Eastern Europe. Many there dreamed of a nation state devoid of minorities. In this sense, the Jews were simply one of several groups that people wanted to rid themselves of. As World War II raged, the Croats didn't just murder Jews but also killed a far larger number of Serbs. Poles and Lithuanians killed each other. Romania liquidated Roma and Ukrainians.
It's hard to determine what motivated people to kill. Often nationalism or anti-Semitism were just excuses. During the war, no one had to go hungry in Germany, but living conditions in Eastern Europe were squalid. "For the Germans, 300 Jews meant 300 enemies of humanity. For the Lithuanians they meant 300 pairs of trousers and 300 pairs of boots," says one eyewitness. That was greed on a personal level. But it also featured on a collective level. In France, 96 percent of aryanized companies remained in French hands. The Hungarian government used the assets seized from Jews to extend its pension system and reduce inflation.
Jews Were Scapegoats for Soviet Crimes
Imaginary revenge also played a part. Pogroms in Poland by local people against Jews in 1941 were based on the assumption that the Jews formed some sort of base for Soviet rule, because communists of Jewish descent had for a time been over-represented in some areas of the Soviet bureaucracy. As a result, many people blamed Jews for the crimes committed during the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland between 1939 and 1941. Stalin's secret police the NKWD had actual and presumed opponents of the regime in the Baltic States, eastern Poland and Ukraine shot or deported to Gulags. As the German troops advanced, the Soviets left behind a deeply traumatized society between the Baltic and the Carpathians -- and many fresh mass graves.
Hitler hadn't worked out all the details of the Holocaust from the start, instead assuming he would be able to drive out all Jews from his sphere of influence after a quick victory over the Soviet Union. But the German advance into the Soviet Union started faltering in autumn 1941, which raised the problem of what to do with the people crammed into ghettos, especially in Poland. Many Gauleiter, SS officers and top administrators called for their territory to be made "judenfrei" ("free of Jews" -- which meant liquidating them. The construction of extermination camps began, first in Belzec, then Sobibor, then Treblinka.
Brief Holocaust Training Course
It was a gigantic killing program in which most of Poland's Jews, 1.75 million, were murdered. The SS preferred to recruit its helpers among Ukrainians or ethnic Germans in prisoner-of-war camps where Red Army soldiers like Demjanjuk faced the choice of killing for the Germans or starving to death. Later, increasing numbers of volunteers from western Ukraine and Galicia joined the unit. The men had to sign a declaration that they had never belonged to a communist group and had no Jewish ancestry. Then they were taken to Travniki in the district of Lublin in south-eastern Poland where they were trained for their deadly profession on the site of a former sugar factory. In mid-1943 some 3,700 men were stationed in Travniki. Training for the Holocaust took several weeks. The SS men showed the new recruits how to carry out raids and how to guard prisoners, often using live subjects. Then the unit would drive to a nearby town and beat Jewish residents out of their homes. Executions were carried out in a nearby forest, probably to make sure that the recruits were loyal.
At first the Travniki were used to guard property and to prevent supply depots from being plundered. Then their German masters sent them to clear ghettos in Lviv and Lublin, where they were remorseless in rounding up their Jewish victims. Finally they were put to work in eight-hour shifts in the extermination camp. "Everyone jumped in where he was needed," recalled one SS officer. Everything worked "like clockwork."
Historians estimate that a third of the Travniki absconded despite the punishment that entailed if they were caught. Some were executed for disobedience. And the others? Why didn't they try to get out of the killing machine? Why didn't Demjanjuk? Die he allow himself to be corrupted by the feeling of "having attained total power over others," as historian Pohl argues. Was it the prospect of loot? In Belzec and Sobibor the Travniki engaged in brisk bartering with the inhabitants of surrounding villages and paid with items they had seized from the prisoners.
Perhaps there was something else, something even more disturbing that many people have deep in their psyche: following orders from authorities even if they ran counter to their conscience. Total and utter obedience.
Part 3: Germany Relied on Outside Help in the Monstrous Murder Project
Germany's troops didn't have the whole of continental Europe under the gun to the same extent. Outside the Third Reich and the occupied territories the Germans needed the help of foreign governments in their monstrous murder project -- in the west as well as the south and southeast of Europe. Their support was strongest among the Slovaks and Croats whom Hitler had given their own states. The Croatian Ustasha fascists set up their own concentration camps where Jews were killed "through typhoid, hunger, shooting, torture, drowning, stabbing and hammer blows to the head," says historian Hilberg. The majority of Croatian Jews were killed by Croats.
Anti-Semitism wasn't so deep-rooted in Italy and was ordered by the state out of consideration for the Germans. An Italian military commander in Mostar (in today's Bosnia) refused to chase Jews from their homes because he said such operations "weren't in keeping with the honor of the Italian army." That wasn't the only the only such case. But it's clear that Benito Mussolini's puppet government of 1943 eagerly took part in persecuting Jews. More than 9,000 Italian Jews were deported to their deaths.
Some 29,000 Jews from Belgium were murdered, many after being denounced in return for cash. Denunciations also happened in the Netherlands and France. Local authorities obediently paved the way for the deportation of Jews and later said they hadn't suspected what fate the Jews faced. That excuse was used by henchmen, opportunists and pen-pushing bureaucrats -- a category of perpetrator that was denied for a long time after the war in France as the country sought to build a myth that the entire French people had been involved in the heroic resistance.
France was divided into two parts. Hitler's troops had occupied three fifths of the country but the southern part of the country remained unoccupied until November 1942 and was ruled by a right-wing government based in Vichy that collaborated with the Germans.
How Many Were Betrayed?
The first major roundup of Jews took place in mid-July 1942 in occupied Paris when almost 13,000 Jews who had no French passport where taken from their homes by French policemen. At least two thirds of the Jews deported from France were foreigners. The remaining third consisted of naturalized French citizens and children born in France to stateless Jews. Police "repeatedly expressed the desire" that the children should be deported as well, one SS officer noted in July 1942. Almost all deportations ended in Auschwitz.
In total almost 76,000 Jews were deported from France and only 3 percent of them survived the Holocaust. It's unknown how many of them were betrayed by the local population. In the Netherlands there's a figure that gives an indication of the extent of denunciation. The country had an authority that hunted Jews on behalf of the Nazis and that listed the property of Jews who had gone into hiding or already been deported. The "Household goods registry office" paid 7.50 guilders for every Jew who could be located -- that's about €40 in today's money. Dutch journalist Ad van Liempt has analyzed historical records and estimated that between March and June 1943 alone, more than 6,800 Jews were tracked down in this way, and that at least 54 people had taken part in this hunt once or even several times. "Most of them made this their main occupation for months," he says.
The head of the unit was a car mechanic called Wim Henneicke who evidently had good connections in the Amsterdam underworld. He built up an extensive network of informants who told him where Jews were hiding. Some 100,000 Jews from the Netherlands were murdered in concentration camps, a far greater proportion than in Belgium or France.
However, in contrast with France, Dutch collaborators were quickly punished after the war. Some 16,000 were put on trial by 1951, and most of them were convicted.
Demjanjuk is a different category of perpetrator. He's not a collaborator or head-hunter, not a policeman of the sort that contributed to the Holocaust far away from the actual killing. He was at the scene, prosecutors say in their detailed arrest warrant.
The Terrible World of the Holocaust Helpers
In the coming days doctors will decide will decide whether and for how long Hitler's last henchman from Sobibor can be put on trial. The German government wants him to face trial. "We owe that to the victims of the Holocaust," says Vice Chancellor Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Those who suffered in the camps under Travniki men like Demjanjuk don't feel any desire for revenge when they talk about him today. American psychoanalyst Jack Terry, who was imprisoned in Flossenbürg concentration camp while Demjanjuk was a guard there, says it would suffice if Demjanjuk "had to sit in his cell for even just one day."
And Sobibor survivor Thomas Blatt says he "doesn't care if he has to go to prison, the trial is important to me. I want the truth."
Demjanjuk could provide information about Sobibor -- and about the terrible world of the Holocaust helpers.
Reporting by Georg Bönisch, Jan Friedmann, Cordula Meyer
.
The Germans are responsible for the industrial-scale mass murder of 6 million Jews. But the collusion of other European countries in the Holocaust has received surprisingly little attention until recently. The trial of John Demjanjuk is set to throw a spotlight on Hitler's foreign helpers.
He's been here before, in this country of perpetrators. He saw this country collapse. He was 25 at the time and his Christian name was Ivan, not John; not yet.
Ivan Demjanjuk served as a guard in Flossenbürg concentration camp until shortly before the end of World War II. He had been transferred there from the SS death camp in Sobibor in present-day Poland. He was Ukrainian, and he was a Travniki, one of the 5,000 men who helped Germany's Nazi regime commit the crime of the millennium -- the murder of all the Jews in Europe, the "Final Solution."
PHOTO GALLERY: EUROPEAN COLLUSION IN THE HOLOCAUST
Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (7 Photos)
He was part of it, if only a very minor cog in the vast machinery of murder. Ivan Demjanjuk stayed in post-war Germany for seven years before he emigrated to the US in 1952 with his wife and daughter on board the General Haan. Once he arrived, he changed his name to John. His time as a supposed DP or "displaced person," as the Anglo-American victors called people made homeless by the war, was over.
DP Demjanjuk had lived in the southern German towns of Landshut and Regensburg where he worked for the US Army. He moved to Ulm, Ellwangen, Bad Reichenhall, and finally to Feldafing on Lake Starnberg. Feldafing belongs to the area covered by the Munich district court, which is why Demjanjuk has been sitting in Munich's Stadelheim prison since he was deported from the US last week. His cell measures 24 square meters, which is extraordinarily spacious by usual prison standards.
Last Big Nazi Trial in Germany
He faces charges of aiding and abetting the murder of at least 29,000 Jews in Sobibor. The trial could start in late summer, provided Demjanjuk, now almost 90, is deemed fit to stand trial. Witnesses will be called to testify, but none of them will be able to identify him. The only evidence lies in the files, but that evidence is strong. Twice, in 1949 and 1979, former Travniki Ignat Danilchenko, who is now dead, stated that Demjanjuk had been an "experienced and efficient guard" who had driven Jews into the gas chambers -- "that was daily work."
Demjanjuk has denied this charge throughout. He says he was never in Flossenbürg or in Sobibor, never pushed people into the gas chambers. The ex-American has adopted the same tactic of denial as many other defendants who stood trial for war crimes after 1945.
DER SPIEGEL
The Holocaust in numbers.
But it's already clear that this last big Nazi trial in Germany will be a deeply extraordinary one because it will for the first time put the foreign perpetrators in the spotlight of world publicity. They are men who have until now received surprisingly little attention -- Ukrainian gendarmes and Latvian auxiliary police, Romanian soldiers or Hungarian railway workers. Polish farmers, Dutch land registry officials, French mayors, Norwegian ministers, Italian soldiers -- they all took part in Germany's Holocaust.
Experts such as Dieter Pohl of the German Institute for Contemporary History estimate that more than 200,000 non-Germans -- about as many as Germans and Austrians -- "prepared, carried out and assisted in acts of murder." And often they were every bit as cold-blooded as Hitler's henchmen.
Just for example, on June 27, 1941, a colonel in the staff of the Germany's Northern Army Group in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas passed a petrol station surrounded by a crowd of people. There were shouts of bravo and clapping, mothers raised their children to give them a better view. The officer stepped closer and later wrote down what he had seen. "On the concrete courtyard there was blonde man aged around 25, of medium height, who was taking a rest and supporting himself on a wooden club which was as thick as an arm and went up to his chest. At his feet lay 15, 20 people who were dead or dying. Water poured from a hose and washed the blood into a drain."
The soldier continued: "Just a few paces behind this man stood around 20 men who -- guarded by several armed civilians -- awaited their gruesome execution in silent submission. Beckoned with a curt wave, the next one stepped up silently and was (…) beaten to death with the wooden club, and every blow met with enthusiastic cheers from the audience."
Orgy of Murder Like a Lithuanian National Ceremony
When all lay dead on the ground, the blonde murderer climbed on the heap of corpses and played the accordion. His audience sang the Lithuanian anthem as if the orgy of murder had been a national ceremony. How could something like that happen? For a long time now, this question hasn't just been directed at the Germans, whose central responsibility for the horror is undisputed -- but also at the perpetrators in all countries.
What led Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu and his generals, soldiers, civil servants and farmers to murder 200,000 Jews (and possibly twice that many) "of their own accord," as historian Armin Heinen puts it. Why did Baltic death squadrons commit murder on German orders in Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine? And why did German Einsatzgruppen -- paramilitary "intervention groups" operated by the SS -- have such an easy time encouraging the non-Jewish population to wage pogroms between Warsaw and Minsk?
It's completely undisputed that the Holocaust would never have happened without Hitler, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler and the many, many other Germans. But it's also certain "that the Germans on their own wouldn't have been able to carry out the murder of millions of European Jews," says Hamburg-based historian Michael Wild.
It's a perception that many survivors never doubted. When the Association of Surviving Lithuanian Jews convened in Munich in 1947, they passed a resolution that bore an unmistakable title: "On the guilt of a large part of the Lithuanian population for the murder of Lithuania's Jews."
In the Third Reich with its well-functioning bureaucracy, there were comprehensive registers of the Jewish population. But in the territories conquered by the German army, Hitler's henchmen needed information of the type supplied in the Netherlands by registry offices whose staff went to a lot of trouble to compile a precise "Register of Jews."
And how would the SS and police have been able to track down Jews in the cities of Eastern Europe with their broad mix of ethnic groups if they hadn't had the support of the local population? Not many Germans would have been able "to recognize a Jew in a crowd," recalls Thomas Blatt, a survivor of Sobibor who wants to testify as a witness at Demjanjuk's trial.
At the time, Blatt was a blonde-haired boy and tried to pass for a Christian child in his Polish home town of Izbica. He didn't wear a yellow star and tried to appear self-confident when he ran into uniformed people. But he was betrayed a number of times -- the Germans paid for information on the whereabouts of Jews -- and he always escaped with a lot of luck.
Denunciation Was Common
Denunciation was so common in Poland that there was a special term for paid informants "Szmalcowniki" (previously a term for a fence). In many cases, the denouncers knew their victims. And while the French, Dutch or Belgians could submit to the illusion that the Jews deported to the east from Paris, Rotterdam or Brussels would be all right in the end, the people in Eastern Europe learned through the grapevine what lay in store for the Jews in Auschwitz or Treblinka.
For sure, many counter-examples can easily be found. A senior officer in Einsatzgruppe C, responsible for the murder of more than 100,000 people, complained that the Ukrainians lacked "pronounced anti-Semitism based on racial or ideological reasons." The officer wrote that "there is a lack of leadership and of spiritual impetus for the pursuit of Jews."
Historian Feliks Tych estimates that some 125,000 Poles rescued Jews without being paid for their services. It's clear that the perpetrators always made up a small minority of their respective population. But the Germans relied on that minority. The SS, police and the army lacked the manpower to search the vast areas where the Nazi leadership planned to kill all people of Jewish origin. Across the 4,000 kilometers stretching from Brittany in western France to the Caucasus, the Nazis were bent on hunting down their victims, deporting them to extermination camps or to local murder sites, preventing escapes, digging mass graves and then carrying out their bloody handiwork.
Of course only Hitler and his entourage or the army could have stopped the Holocaust. But this doesn't invalidate the argument that without the foreign helpers, countless thousands or even millions of the approximately six million murdered Jews would have survived.
In the killing fields of Eastern Europe, there were up to 10 local helpers for every German policeman. The ratio is similar in the extermination camps. Not in Auschwitz, which was run almost entirely by Germans, but in Belzec (600,000 killed), Treblinka (900,000 deaths) or in Demjanjuk's Sobibor. There, a handful of SS members were assisted by some 120 Travniki men.
Without them, the Germans would never have managed to kill 250,000 Jews in Sobibor, says former prisoner Blatt. It was the Travniki who guarded the camp, drove all the Jews from the railway wagons and trucks after their arrival in the camp, and who beat them into the gas chambers.
Was the Holocaust a European Project?
Such a stupefying number of victims raises disturbing questions, and Berlin historian Götz Aly already started asking them a few years ago: was the so-called Final Solution in fact a "European project that cannot be explained solely by the special circumstances of German history"?
Part 2: Many Foreign Perpetrators Acted Voluntarily
There is no final verdict yet on the European dimension of the Holocaust. The French and Italians started late -- when most of the perpetrators were already dead -- to deal comprehensively with this part of their history. Others, such as the Ukrainians and Lithuanians, are still dragging their feet; or they have only just begun, like Romania, Hungary and Poland.
Since 1945 the countries invaded and ravaged by Hitler's armies have seen themselves as victims -- which they doubtless were, with their vast numbers of dead. That makes it all the more painful to concede that many compatriots aided the German perpetrators.
In Latvia, local assistance was greater than anywhere else. According to the American historian Raul Hilberg, the Latvians had the highest proportion of Nazi helpers. T he Danes are at the other end of the scale. When the deportation of Denmark's Jews was about to begin in 1943, large parts of the population helped Jews to escape to Sweden or hid them. Some 98 percent of Denmark's 7,500 Jews survived World War II. By contrast, only nine percent of the Dutch Jews survived.
Does the Holocaust represent the low point not only of German history, but of European history as well, as historian Aly argues?
There is evidence challenging the widely-held notion that foreign perpetrators were forced to help the Germans commit murder. It's true that local helpers risked their lives by refusing to assist the German occupiers. That applied to the police units and civil servants in occupied Western Europe as much as it did to newly-formed auxiliary police in the east. But it's also true that in many places people volunteered to serve the Germans or participated in crimes without being forced to.
There is also the often-repeated claim that the governments of countries allied with Hitler had no choice but to hand over Jewish citizens to the Germans. That's not true either. The Balkan countries in particular quickly understood how important the "solution to the Jewish Question" was to Hitler and his diplomats -- and they tried to extract the highest possible price for their complicity.
There's also reason to doubt the assumption that the helpers were pathological sadists. If that were true, they should be easy to identify, for example within the group of 50 Lithuanians who served under the command of SS Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Joachim Hamann. The men would drive around the villages up to five times a week to murder Jews, and ended up killing 60,000 people. It only took a few crates of Vodka to get them in the mood. In the evenings the troop would return to Kaunas and boast of their crimes in the mess hall.
None of the Lithuanians had been criminals before. They were "totally and utterly normal," believes historian Knut Stang. Almost everywhere after the war, the murderers returned to their ordinary lives as if nothing had happened. Demjanjuk too was a law-abiding citizen. In Cleveland, Ohio, where he lived, he was regarded as good colleague and a friendly neighbor.
It's the same as with the German perpetrators. There's no identifiable type of killer -- that's a particularly disturbing conclusion reached by historians. The murderers included Catholics and Protestants, hot-blooded southern Europeans and cool Balts, obsessive right-wing extremists or unfeeling bureaucrats, refined academics or violent rednecks.
Among them was Viktor Arajs (1910-1988), a learned lawyer from a Latvian farming family who commanded a unit of more than 1,000 men that murdered its way around Eastern Europe on behalf of the Nazis. Or the Romanian Generaru, son of a general and commander of the ghetto in Bersad in Ukraine, who had one of his victims tied to a motorbike and dragged to death.
Anti-Semitism Was Rife Across Europe
And anti-Semitism? In the 1930s, anti-Semitism grew across Europe because the upheaval after World War I and the global economic crisis had unsettled people. In Eastern Europe, the tendency to regard Jews as scapegoats and to try and exclude them from the job market was especially strong. In Hungary, Jews were banned from public office at the end of the 1930s and were forbidden to work in a large number of professions. Romania voluntarily adopted Nazi Germany's racist and anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws. In Poland, many universities restricted access for Jewish students.
The extent of the hatred of Jews is also reflected in the fact that after the end of the war in 1945, mobs in Poland killed at least 600, and possibly even thousands of Holocaust survivors. However, excessive nationalism appears to have been the more important factor, at least in Eastern Europe. Many there dreamed of a nation state devoid of minorities. In this sense, the Jews were simply one of several groups that people wanted to rid themselves of. As World War II raged, the Croats didn't just murder Jews but also killed a far larger number of Serbs. Poles and Lithuanians killed each other. Romania liquidated Roma and Ukrainians.
It's hard to determine what motivated people to kill. Often nationalism or anti-Semitism were just excuses. During the war, no one had to go hungry in Germany, but living conditions in Eastern Europe were squalid. "For the Germans, 300 Jews meant 300 enemies of humanity. For the Lithuanians they meant 300 pairs of trousers and 300 pairs of boots," says one eyewitness. That was greed on a personal level. But it also featured on a collective level. In France, 96 percent of aryanized companies remained in French hands. The Hungarian government used the assets seized from Jews to extend its pension system and reduce inflation.
Jews Were Scapegoats for Soviet Crimes
Imaginary revenge also played a part. Pogroms in Poland by local people against Jews in 1941 were based on the assumption that the Jews formed some sort of base for Soviet rule, because communists of Jewish descent had for a time been over-represented in some areas of the Soviet bureaucracy. As a result, many people blamed Jews for the crimes committed during the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland between 1939 and 1941. Stalin's secret police the NKWD had actual and presumed opponents of the regime in the Baltic States, eastern Poland and Ukraine shot or deported to Gulags. As the German troops advanced, the Soviets left behind a deeply traumatized society between the Baltic and the Carpathians -- and many fresh mass graves.
Hitler hadn't worked out all the details of the Holocaust from the start, instead assuming he would be able to drive out all Jews from his sphere of influence after a quick victory over the Soviet Union. But the German advance into the Soviet Union started faltering in autumn 1941, which raised the problem of what to do with the people crammed into ghettos, especially in Poland. Many Gauleiter, SS officers and top administrators called for their territory to be made "judenfrei" ("free of Jews" -- which meant liquidating them. The construction of extermination camps began, first in Belzec, then Sobibor, then Treblinka.
Brief Holocaust Training Course
It was a gigantic killing program in which most of Poland's Jews, 1.75 million, were murdered. The SS preferred to recruit its helpers among Ukrainians or ethnic Germans in prisoner-of-war camps where Red Army soldiers like Demjanjuk faced the choice of killing for the Germans or starving to death. Later, increasing numbers of volunteers from western Ukraine and Galicia joined the unit. The men had to sign a declaration that they had never belonged to a communist group and had no Jewish ancestry. Then they were taken to Travniki in the district of Lublin in south-eastern Poland where they were trained for their deadly profession on the site of a former sugar factory. In mid-1943 some 3,700 men were stationed in Travniki. Training for the Holocaust took several weeks. The SS men showed the new recruits how to carry out raids and how to guard prisoners, often using live subjects. Then the unit would drive to a nearby town and beat Jewish residents out of their homes. Executions were carried out in a nearby forest, probably to make sure that the recruits were loyal.
At first the Travniki were used to guard property and to prevent supply depots from being plundered. Then their German masters sent them to clear ghettos in Lviv and Lublin, where they were remorseless in rounding up their Jewish victims. Finally they were put to work in eight-hour shifts in the extermination camp. "Everyone jumped in where he was needed," recalled one SS officer. Everything worked "like clockwork."
Historians estimate that a third of the Travniki absconded despite the punishment that entailed if they were caught. Some were executed for disobedience. And the others? Why didn't they try to get out of the killing machine? Why didn't Demjanjuk? Die he allow himself to be corrupted by the feeling of "having attained total power over others," as historian Pohl argues. Was it the prospect of loot? In Belzec and Sobibor the Travniki engaged in brisk bartering with the inhabitants of surrounding villages and paid with items they had seized from the prisoners.
Perhaps there was something else, something even more disturbing that many people have deep in their psyche: following orders from authorities even if they ran counter to their conscience. Total and utter obedience.
Part 3: Germany Relied on Outside Help in the Monstrous Murder Project
Germany's troops didn't have the whole of continental Europe under the gun to the same extent. Outside the Third Reich and the occupied territories the Germans needed the help of foreign governments in their monstrous murder project -- in the west as well as the south and southeast of Europe. Their support was strongest among the Slovaks and Croats whom Hitler had given their own states. The Croatian Ustasha fascists set up their own concentration camps where Jews were killed "through typhoid, hunger, shooting, torture, drowning, stabbing and hammer blows to the head," says historian Hilberg. The majority of Croatian Jews were killed by Croats.
Anti-Semitism wasn't so deep-rooted in Italy and was ordered by the state out of consideration for the Germans. An Italian military commander in Mostar (in today's Bosnia) refused to chase Jews from their homes because he said such operations "weren't in keeping with the honor of the Italian army." That wasn't the only the only such case. But it's clear that Benito Mussolini's puppet government of 1943 eagerly took part in persecuting Jews. More than 9,000 Italian Jews were deported to their deaths.
Some 29,000 Jews from Belgium were murdered, many after being denounced in return for cash. Denunciations also happened in the Netherlands and France. Local authorities obediently paved the way for the deportation of Jews and later said they hadn't suspected what fate the Jews faced. That excuse was used by henchmen, opportunists and pen-pushing bureaucrats -- a category of perpetrator that was denied for a long time after the war in France as the country sought to build a myth that the entire French people had been involved in the heroic resistance.
France was divided into two parts. Hitler's troops had occupied three fifths of the country but the southern part of the country remained unoccupied until November 1942 and was ruled by a right-wing government based in Vichy that collaborated with the Germans.
How Many Were Betrayed?
The first major roundup of Jews took place in mid-July 1942 in occupied Paris when almost 13,000 Jews who had no French passport where taken from their homes by French policemen. At least two thirds of the Jews deported from France were foreigners. The remaining third consisted of naturalized French citizens and children born in France to stateless Jews. Police "repeatedly expressed the desire" that the children should be deported as well, one SS officer noted in July 1942. Almost all deportations ended in Auschwitz.
In total almost 76,000 Jews were deported from France and only 3 percent of them survived the Holocaust. It's unknown how many of them were betrayed by the local population. In the Netherlands there's a figure that gives an indication of the extent of denunciation. The country had an authority that hunted Jews on behalf of the Nazis and that listed the property of Jews who had gone into hiding or already been deported. The "Household goods registry office" paid 7.50 guilders for every Jew who could be located -- that's about €40 in today's money. Dutch journalist Ad van Liempt has analyzed historical records and estimated that between March and June 1943 alone, more than 6,800 Jews were tracked down in this way, and that at least 54 people had taken part in this hunt once or even several times. "Most of them made this their main occupation for months," he says.
The head of the unit was a car mechanic called Wim Henneicke who evidently had good connections in the Amsterdam underworld. He built up an extensive network of informants who told him where Jews were hiding. Some 100,000 Jews from the Netherlands were murdered in concentration camps, a far greater proportion than in Belgium or France.
However, in contrast with France, Dutch collaborators were quickly punished after the war. Some 16,000 were put on trial by 1951, and most of them were convicted.
Demjanjuk is a different category of perpetrator. He's not a collaborator or head-hunter, not a policeman of the sort that contributed to the Holocaust far away from the actual killing. He was at the scene, prosecutors say in their detailed arrest warrant.
The Terrible World of the Holocaust Helpers
In the coming days doctors will decide will decide whether and for how long Hitler's last henchman from Sobibor can be put on trial. The German government wants him to face trial. "We owe that to the victims of the Holocaust," says Vice Chancellor Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Those who suffered in the camps under Travniki men like Demjanjuk don't feel any desire for revenge when they talk about him today. American psychoanalyst Jack Terry, who was imprisoned in Flossenbürg concentration camp while Demjanjuk was a guard there, says it would suffice if Demjanjuk "had to sit in his cell for even just one day."
And Sobibor survivor Thomas Blatt says he "doesn't care if he has to go to prison, the trial is important to me. I want the truth."
Demjanjuk could provide information about Sobibor -- and about the terrible world of the Holocaust helpers.
Reporting by Georg Bönisch, Jan Friedmann, Cordula Meyer
.
Obama's Corporatism Strategy Might Advance Cap-and-Trade
Tom Borelli
Saturday, May 30, 2009
President Obama and Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) have found big business to be a crucial ally in their quest for a national cap-and-trade law to limit carbon emissions.
Corporate backing greatly enhances the global warming bill’s prospects of passing, but it also reveals a key feature of Obama’s political strategy: a new era of special interest politics in which major corporations work in concert with liberal politicians and advocacy groups to advance the left-wing agenda.
Obama already is using the power and prestige of his office to drive cap-and-trade. In February, through an executive order, he created the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB) to provide “an independent voice on economic issues.”
In reality, PERAB will serve as a platform to trumpet business support for Obama’s energy policy. For instance, following its first meeting on May 20, PERAB circulated a memorandum endorsing cap-and-trade as “…the most important step in a coherent strategy for curtailing emissions.”
In an interview prior to the board’s first meeting, Austan Goolsbee, staff director for PERAB, acknowledged the critical role that business will play in achieving Obama’s goals by saying, “Here’s a case where government policy with the private sector working together is the only way that it really can get done.”
Not surprisingly, Obama picked CEOs such as Jeff Immelt of GE and Jim Owens of Caterpillar – executives who already had made a commitment to pursue cap-and-trade legislation – to participate in PERAB.
Immelt and Owens also are members of the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a coalition comprised of over twenty corporations and environmental activist organizations that is actively lobbying for cap-and-trade legislation.
In addition, Obama added liberal advocacy groups to PERAB. The panel has strong labor union representation through Richard L. Trumka, who is secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, and Anna Burger, who chairs Change to Win, which is a labor federation representing seven unions and their six million workers. Burger also is an executive with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
Meanwhile, in Congress, the rapid progress of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (HR 2454) – a cap-and-trade bill – can be attributed to the lobbying push of major corporations.
Ironically, it’s corporate America that allowed Waxman, a noted critic of industry practices, to keep his promise to move his global warming bill out of the Energy and Commerce Committee by Memorial Day.
The greatest impetus for the cap-and-trade bill was supplied by USCAP. As the Los Angeles Times reported, “Companies such as Alcoa and Duke Energy, the nation's largest producer of electricity generated by burning coal, have been marshaling votes on Capitol Hill, working behind the scenes with committee negotiators and providing what House leaders call a blueprint for compromise.”
In an unprecedented effort, USCAP members Duke Energy and Exelon (which are major utilities) and Environmental Defense (an environmental activist organization) are promoting cap-and-trade legislation through an advertising campaign. The ads, paid for by Environmental Defense, feature Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers and Exelon CEO John Rowe calling for a “smart cap” to reduce carbon emissions.
Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-MA), coauthor of the cap-and-trade bill, has recognized the importance of business support, saying, “Their support is indispensable."
In another first, companies supporting cap-and-trade are trying to silence trade association opposition to the global warming bill. Johnson & Johnson sent a letter to the U.S Chamber of Commerce asking the trade group to stop its opposition to Congressional action on global warming because that position does not reflect the views of all its members. Johnson & Johnson is a member of both USCAP and the Chamber.
Similarly, Duke Energy decided not to renew membership in the National Association of Manufacturers in part because of conflicting views over global warming legislation.
By co-opting corporate interests, the Left has brilliantly converted a former opponent into a powerful ally and constructed a win-win situation for the liberal-corporate axis.
In this deal, CEOs obtain special legislative carve outs that give their company a competitive advantage over competition. In addition, needy CEOs also get accolades from the liberal elite in the form of ego-boosting media stories and, for a select few, photo opportunities with the president.
In exchange, the Left acquires the almost unlimited resources of a corporation – lobbying, public relations and advertising – to promote its political agenda. With GE, the liberal movement also acquires the company’s media units (NBC, MSNBC and CNBC), which aggressively push the green agenda in news coverage and network programming.
Fundamentally, Obama and Waxman are fostering a form of Corporatism in which a collection of powerful special interest groups join together to advance their world view.
The losers are everyday Americans who cherish their individual liberty, consumer choice and standard of living – all of which will be reduced thanks to the adverse consequences of cap-and-trade.
While cap-and-trade must still pass the House of Representatives, and faces a high hurdle in the Senate, don’t underestimate the lobbying might and collective force of the labor unions, environmentalists and corporations supporting the energy policy of a popular president aided by a Congressional majority.
The overwhelming power of this juggernaut can overwhelm the resistance offered by conservative Republicans and fiscally moderate Democrats.
For the sake of liberty, let’s hope Obama’s corporatism strategy fails.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
President Obama and Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) have found big business to be a crucial ally in their quest for a national cap-and-trade law to limit carbon emissions.
Corporate backing greatly enhances the global warming bill’s prospects of passing, but it also reveals a key feature of Obama’s political strategy: a new era of special interest politics in which major corporations work in concert with liberal politicians and advocacy groups to advance the left-wing agenda.
Obama already is using the power and prestige of his office to drive cap-and-trade. In February, through an executive order, he created the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB) to provide “an independent voice on economic issues.”
In reality, PERAB will serve as a platform to trumpet business support for Obama’s energy policy. For instance, following its first meeting on May 20, PERAB circulated a memorandum endorsing cap-and-trade as “…the most important step in a coherent strategy for curtailing emissions.”
In an interview prior to the board’s first meeting, Austan Goolsbee, staff director for PERAB, acknowledged the critical role that business will play in achieving Obama’s goals by saying, “Here’s a case where government policy with the private sector working together is the only way that it really can get done.”
Not surprisingly, Obama picked CEOs such as Jeff Immelt of GE and Jim Owens of Caterpillar – executives who already had made a commitment to pursue cap-and-trade legislation – to participate in PERAB.
Immelt and Owens also are members of the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a coalition comprised of over twenty corporations and environmental activist organizations that is actively lobbying for cap-and-trade legislation.
In addition, Obama added liberal advocacy groups to PERAB. The panel has strong labor union representation through Richard L. Trumka, who is secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, and Anna Burger, who chairs Change to Win, which is a labor federation representing seven unions and their six million workers. Burger also is an executive with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
Meanwhile, in Congress, the rapid progress of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (HR 2454) – a cap-and-trade bill – can be attributed to the lobbying push of major corporations.
Ironically, it’s corporate America that allowed Waxman, a noted critic of industry practices, to keep his promise to move his global warming bill out of the Energy and Commerce Committee by Memorial Day.
The greatest impetus for the cap-and-trade bill was supplied by USCAP. As the Los Angeles Times reported, “Companies such as Alcoa and Duke Energy, the nation's largest producer of electricity generated by burning coal, have been marshaling votes on Capitol Hill, working behind the scenes with committee negotiators and providing what House leaders call a blueprint for compromise.”
In an unprecedented effort, USCAP members Duke Energy and Exelon (which are major utilities) and Environmental Defense (an environmental activist organization) are promoting cap-and-trade legislation through an advertising campaign. The ads, paid for by Environmental Defense, feature Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers and Exelon CEO John Rowe calling for a “smart cap” to reduce carbon emissions.
Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-MA), coauthor of the cap-and-trade bill, has recognized the importance of business support, saying, “Their support is indispensable."
In another first, companies supporting cap-and-trade are trying to silence trade association opposition to the global warming bill. Johnson & Johnson sent a letter to the U.S Chamber of Commerce asking the trade group to stop its opposition to Congressional action on global warming because that position does not reflect the views of all its members. Johnson & Johnson is a member of both USCAP and the Chamber.
Similarly, Duke Energy decided not to renew membership in the National Association of Manufacturers in part because of conflicting views over global warming legislation.
By co-opting corporate interests, the Left has brilliantly converted a former opponent into a powerful ally and constructed a win-win situation for the liberal-corporate axis.
In this deal, CEOs obtain special legislative carve outs that give their company a competitive advantage over competition. In addition, needy CEOs also get accolades from the liberal elite in the form of ego-boosting media stories and, for a select few, photo opportunities with the president.
In exchange, the Left acquires the almost unlimited resources of a corporation – lobbying, public relations and advertising – to promote its political agenda. With GE, the liberal movement also acquires the company’s media units (NBC, MSNBC and CNBC), which aggressively push the green agenda in news coverage and network programming.
Fundamentally, Obama and Waxman are fostering a form of Corporatism in which a collection of powerful special interest groups join together to advance their world view.
The losers are everyday Americans who cherish their individual liberty, consumer choice and standard of living – all of which will be reduced thanks to the adverse consequences of cap-and-trade.
While cap-and-trade must still pass the House of Representatives, and faces a high hurdle in the Senate, don’t underestimate the lobbying might and collective force of the labor unions, environmentalists and corporations supporting the energy policy of a popular president aided by a Congressional majority.
The overwhelming power of this juggernaut can overwhelm the resistance offered by conservative Republicans and fiscally moderate Democrats.
For the sake of liberty, let’s hope Obama’s corporatism strategy fails.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
The war to stop the federal government from funding Islam and Shariah-compliant financing is far from
Guest Post:
USA citizens please read carefully! This is outrageous the least to say! Each American should jump out of his skin! I did!
AIG is a corrupt, badly managed and greedy company that failed on an unprecedented international level. Our government is corrupt in its core, irresponsible, belligerently stupid, and horrifically hasty and it bailed this company out and the bail out may not have saved this company after all.
The lawsuit—brought on behalf of a former Marine who served honorably in harm's way in Iraq to defend our country against Islamic terrorists—sufficiently alleges a federal constitutional challenge to the use of taxpayer money to fund AIG's Islamic religious activities using Shariah law, which potentially provides support for terrorist activities aimed at killing Americans. The USA government is a majority share holder in AIG; it rushed to bailout itself and with $40 billion of taxpayer money it funded this federal government's majority ownership company, which engages in Shariah-based Islamic religious activities that are anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Jewish.
The war to stop the federal government from funding Islam and Shariah-compliant financing is far from over.
Worthwhile reading and keeping in mind when next election comes.—Nurit
If you want to send a message in support—I did—to the Thomas More Law Center:
http://www.thomasmore.org/qry/page.taf?id=29
Telephone: (734) 827-2001
Facsimile: (734) 930-7160
E-mail: info@thomasmore.org
-----------
Friday, May 29, 2009
To: Thomas More Law Center represented by represented by Trial Counsel Robert Muise and by David Yerushalmi
Fax: (734) 930-7160
Attn.: Federal District Court Judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff
Attn.: Kevin Murray
Dear Gentlemen,
As an American citizen and a Federal tax payer, I hereby join Kevin Murray in objecting to be forced, as a taxpayer, to contribute to the propagation of Islamic beliefs and practices predicated upon Shariah law, which is hostile to my Jewish religion.
I ask you to please conduct the court proceeding until verdict is passed, hopefully against the misconduct and misappropriation of funds by the USA government and in favor of the American Federal tax payers citizens.
I join the war to stop the federal government from funding Islam and Shariah-complaint financing.
Thank you for defending our laws and the interest of all American citizens.
Nurit Greenger
Los Angeles, California
--------
From: Janet Ellen Levy
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 11:26 PM
Subject: Thomas More Law Center Fights Sharia Financing and AIG
http://www.thomasmore.org/qry/page.taf?id=19
Trouble Brewing for AIG and Federal Government; Challenge of AIG Bailout Allowed to Proceed
May 27, 2009
AIG - AIG BuildingANN ARBOR, MI - Proclaiming that times of crisis do not justify departure from the Constitution, Federal District Court Judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff allowed the lawsuit against Treasury Secretary Timothy
Geithner and the Federal Reserve Board challenging the AIG bailout to proceed. The lawsuit was filed last December by the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and attorney David Yerushalmi, an expert in security transactions and Shariah-compliant financing.
In his well-written and detailed analysis issued yesterday, Judge Zatkoff denied the request by the Obama administration's Department of Justice to dismiss the lawsuit. The request was filed on behalf of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the Federal Reserve Board - the named defendants in the case. In his ruling, the judge held that the lawsuit sufficiently alleged a federal constitutional challenge to the use of taxpayer money to fund AIG's Islamic religious activities.
Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, commented, "It is outrageous that AIG has been using taxpayer money to promote Islam and Shariah law, which potentially provides support for
terrorist activities aimed at killing Americans. Shariah law is the same law championed by Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban. It is the same law that prompted the 9/11 terrorist attacks on our soil that killed thousands of innocent Americans. We won this skirmish. But the war to stop the federal government from funding Islam and Shariah-compliant financing is far from over."
In its request to dismiss the lawsuit, the DOJ argued that the plaintiff in the case, Kevin Murray, who is a former Marine and a federal taxpayer, lacked standing to bring the action. And even if he did have standing, DOJ
argued that the use of the bailout money to fund AIG's operations did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The court disagreed, noting, in relevant part, the following:
In this case, the fact that AIG is largely a secular entity is not dispositive: The question in an as-applied challenge is not whether the entity is of a religious character, but how it spends its grant. The circumstances of this case are historic, and the pressure upon the government to navigate this financial crisis is unfathomable. Times of
crisis, however, do not justify departure from the Constitution. In this case, the United States government has a majority interest in AIG. AIG utilizes consolidated financing whereby all funds flow through a single port
to support all of its activities, including Sharia-compliant financing. Pursuant to the EESA, the government has injected AIG with tens of billions of dollars, without restricting or tracking how this considerable sum of
money is spent. At least two of AIG's subsidiary companies practice Sharia-compliant financing, one of which was unveiled after the influx of government cash. After using the $40 billion from the government to pay down
the $85 billion credit facility, the credit facility retained $60 billion in available credit, suggesting that AIG did not use all $40 billion consistent with its press release. Finally, after the government acquired a majority interest in AIG and contributed substantial funds to AIG for operational purposes, the government co-sponsored a forum entitled "Islamic Finance 101." These facts, taken together, raise a question of whether the government's involvement with AIG has created the effect of promoting religion and sufficiently raise Plaintiff's claim beyond the speculative level, warranting dismissal inappropriate at this stage in the proceedings.
General - PDF Links Click here to read Judge Zatkoff's entire ruling. http://www.thomasmore.org/downloads/sb_thomasmore/AIGCase-OrderDenyingDefendantsMotiontoDismiss.pdf
The lawsuit, which was filed in December of last year in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, is a constitutiona challenge to that portion of the "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008" (EESA) that appropriated $40 billion in taxpayer money to fund and financially support the federal government's majority ownership interest in AIG, which engages in Shariah-based Islamic religious activities that are anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish.
According to the lawsuit, "The use of these taxpayer funds to approve, promote, endorse, support, and fund these Shariah-based Islamic religious activities violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the
United States Constitution."
The lawsuit was brought on behalf of Murray, a former Marine who served honorably in harm's way in Iraq to defend our country against Islamic terrorists. Murray objects to being forced as a taxpayer to contribute to
the propagation of Islamic beliefs and practices predicated upon Shariah law, which is hostile to his Christian religion. He is being represented by Thomas More Law Center Trial Counsel Robert Muise and by David Yerushalmi,
an associated attorney who is an expert in Shariah law and Shariah-compliant financing, as well as general counsel to the Center for Security Policy.
According to the lawsuit, through the use of taxpayer funds, the federal government acquired a majority ownership interest (nearly 80%) in AIG, and as part of the bailout, Congress appropriated and expended an additional $40
billion of taxpayer money to fund and financially support AIG and its financial activities. AIG, which is now a government owned company, engages in Shariah-compliant financing which subjects certain financial activities,
including investments, to the dictates of Islamic law and the Islamic religion. This specifically includes any profits or interest obtained through such financial activities. AIG itself describes "Sharia" as "Islamic
law based on the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet [Mohammed]."
With the aid of taxpayer funds provided by Congress, AIG employs a "Shariah Supervisory Committee," which is comprised of the following members: Sheikh Nizam Yaquby from Bahrain, Dr. Mohammed Ali Elgari from
Saudi Arabia, and Dr. Muhammed Imran Ashraf Usmani from Pakistan. Dr. Usmani is the son, student, and dedicated disciple of Mufti Taqi Usmani, who is the leading Shariah authority for Shariah-compliant finance in the world and the author of a book translated into English in 1999 that includes an entire chapter dedicated to explaining why a Western Muslim must engage in violent jihad against his own country or government. According to AIG, the role of its Shariah authority "is to review our operations, supervise its development of Islamic products, and determine Shariah compliance of these products and our investments."
An important element of Shariah-compliant financing is a form of obligatory charitable contribution called zakat, which is a religious tax for assisting those that "struggle [jihad] for Allah." The amount of this tax is between
2.5% and 20%, depending upon the source of the wealth. The zakat religious tax is used to financially support Islamic "charities," some of which have ties to terrorist organizations that are hostile to the United States and
all other "infidels," which includes Christians and Jews.
The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, an example of an Islamic "charity" that qualifies for receipt of the zakat, was recently convicted by a federal jury for providing millions of dollars to Islamic terrorist organizations. As a direct consequence of the taxpayer funds appropriated and expended to purchase and financially support AIG, the
federal government is now the owner of a corporation engaged in the business of collecting religious taxes to fund interests adverse to the United States, Christians, Jews, and all other "infidels" under Islamic law.
The Thomas More Law Center defends and promotes America's Christian heritage and moral values, including the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life. It supports a strong national defense and an independent and sovereign United States of America. The Law Center accomplishes its mission through litigation, education, and related activities. It does not charge for its services. The Law Center is supported by contributions from individuals, corporations and foundations, and is recognized by the IRS as a section 501(c)(3) organization. You may reach the Thomas More Law Center at (734) 827-2001 or visit our website at ww.thomasmore.org.
USA citizens please read carefully! This is outrageous the least to say! Each American should jump out of his skin! I did!
AIG is a corrupt, badly managed and greedy company that failed on an unprecedented international level. Our government is corrupt in its core, irresponsible, belligerently stupid, and horrifically hasty and it bailed this company out and the bail out may not have saved this company after all.
The lawsuit—brought on behalf of a former Marine who served honorably in harm's way in Iraq to defend our country against Islamic terrorists—sufficiently alleges a federal constitutional challenge to the use of taxpayer money to fund AIG's Islamic religious activities using Shariah law, which potentially provides support for terrorist activities aimed at killing Americans. The USA government is a majority share holder in AIG; it rushed to bailout itself and with $40 billion of taxpayer money it funded this federal government's majority ownership company, which engages in Shariah-based Islamic religious activities that are anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Jewish.
The war to stop the federal government from funding Islam and Shariah-compliant financing is far from over.
Worthwhile reading and keeping in mind when next election comes.—Nurit
If you want to send a message in support—I did—to the Thomas More Law Center:
http://www.thomasmore.org/qry/page.taf?id=29
Telephone: (734) 827-2001
Facsimile: (734) 930-7160
E-mail: info@thomasmore.org
-----------
Friday, May 29, 2009
To: Thomas More Law Center represented by represented by Trial Counsel Robert Muise and by David Yerushalmi
Fax: (734) 930-7160
Attn.: Federal District Court Judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff
Attn.: Kevin Murray
Dear Gentlemen,
As an American citizen and a Federal tax payer, I hereby join Kevin Murray in objecting to be forced, as a taxpayer, to contribute to the propagation of Islamic beliefs and practices predicated upon Shariah law, which is hostile to my Jewish religion.
I ask you to please conduct the court proceeding until verdict is passed, hopefully against the misconduct and misappropriation of funds by the USA government and in favor of the American Federal tax payers citizens.
I join the war to stop the federal government from funding Islam and Shariah-complaint financing.
Thank you for defending our laws and the interest of all American citizens.
Nurit Greenger
Los Angeles, California
--------
From: Janet Ellen Levy
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 11:26 PM
Subject: Thomas More Law Center Fights Sharia Financing and AIG
http://www.thomasmore.org/qry/page.taf?id=19
Trouble Brewing for AIG and Federal Government; Challenge of AIG Bailout Allowed to Proceed
May 27, 2009
AIG - AIG BuildingANN ARBOR, MI - Proclaiming that times of crisis do not justify departure from the Constitution, Federal District Court Judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff allowed the lawsuit against Treasury Secretary Timothy
Geithner and the Federal Reserve Board challenging the AIG bailout to proceed. The lawsuit was filed last December by the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and attorney David Yerushalmi, an expert in security transactions and Shariah-compliant financing.
In his well-written and detailed analysis issued yesterday, Judge Zatkoff denied the request by the Obama administration's Department of Justice to dismiss the lawsuit. The request was filed on behalf of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the Federal Reserve Board - the named defendants in the case. In his ruling, the judge held that the lawsuit sufficiently alleged a federal constitutional challenge to the use of taxpayer money to fund AIG's Islamic religious activities.
Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, commented, "It is outrageous that AIG has been using taxpayer money to promote Islam and Shariah law, which potentially provides support for
terrorist activities aimed at killing Americans. Shariah law is the same law championed by Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban. It is the same law that prompted the 9/11 terrorist attacks on our soil that killed thousands of innocent Americans. We won this skirmish. But the war to stop the federal government from funding Islam and Shariah-compliant financing is far from over."
In its request to dismiss the lawsuit, the DOJ argued that the plaintiff in the case, Kevin Murray, who is a former Marine and a federal taxpayer, lacked standing to bring the action. And even if he did have standing, DOJ
argued that the use of the bailout money to fund AIG's operations did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The court disagreed, noting, in relevant part, the following:
In this case, the fact that AIG is largely a secular entity is not dispositive: The question in an as-applied challenge is not whether the entity is of a religious character, but how it spends its grant. The circumstances of this case are historic, and the pressure upon the government to navigate this financial crisis is unfathomable. Times of
crisis, however, do not justify departure from the Constitution. In this case, the United States government has a majority interest in AIG. AIG utilizes consolidated financing whereby all funds flow through a single port
to support all of its activities, including Sharia-compliant financing. Pursuant to the EESA, the government has injected AIG with tens of billions of dollars, without restricting or tracking how this considerable sum of
money is spent. At least two of AIG's subsidiary companies practice Sharia-compliant financing, one of which was unveiled after the influx of government cash. After using the $40 billion from the government to pay down
the $85 billion credit facility, the credit facility retained $60 billion in available credit, suggesting that AIG did not use all $40 billion consistent with its press release. Finally, after the government acquired a majority interest in AIG and contributed substantial funds to AIG for operational purposes, the government co-sponsored a forum entitled "Islamic Finance 101." These facts, taken together, raise a question of whether the government's involvement with AIG has created the effect of promoting religion and sufficiently raise Plaintiff's claim beyond the speculative level, warranting dismissal inappropriate at this stage in the proceedings.
General - PDF Links Click here to read Judge Zatkoff's entire ruling. http://www.thomasmore.org/downloads/sb_thomasmore/AIGCase-OrderDenyingDefendantsMotiontoDismiss.pdf
The lawsuit, which was filed in December of last year in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, is a constitutiona challenge to that portion of the "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008" (EESA) that appropriated $40 billion in taxpayer money to fund and financially support the federal government's majority ownership interest in AIG, which engages in Shariah-based Islamic religious activities that are anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish.
According to the lawsuit, "The use of these taxpayer funds to approve, promote, endorse, support, and fund these Shariah-based Islamic religious activities violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the
United States Constitution."
The lawsuit was brought on behalf of Murray, a former Marine who served honorably in harm's way in Iraq to defend our country against Islamic terrorists. Murray objects to being forced as a taxpayer to contribute to
the propagation of Islamic beliefs and practices predicated upon Shariah law, which is hostile to his Christian religion. He is being represented by Thomas More Law Center Trial Counsel Robert Muise and by David Yerushalmi,
an associated attorney who is an expert in Shariah law and Shariah-compliant financing, as well as general counsel to the Center for Security Policy.
According to the lawsuit, through the use of taxpayer funds, the federal government acquired a majority ownership interest (nearly 80%) in AIG, and as part of the bailout, Congress appropriated and expended an additional $40
billion of taxpayer money to fund and financially support AIG and its financial activities. AIG, which is now a government owned company, engages in Shariah-compliant financing which subjects certain financial activities,
including investments, to the dictates of Islamic law and the Islamic religion. This specifically includes any profits or interest obtained through such financial activities. AIG itself describes "Sharia" as "Islamic
law based on the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet [Mohammed]."
With the aid of taxpayer funds provided by Congress, AIG employs a "Shariah Supervisory Committee," which is comprised of the following members: Sheikh Nizam Yaquby from Bahrain, Dr. Mohammed Ali Elgari from
Saudi Arabia, and Dr. Muhammed Imran Ashraf Usmani from Pakistan. Dr. Usmani is the son, student, and dedicated disciple of Mufti Taqi Usmani, who is the leading Shariah authority for Shariah-compliant finance in the world and the author of a book translated into English in 1999 that includes an entire chapter dedicated to explaining why a Western Muslim must engage in violent jihad against his own country or government. According to AIG, the role of its Shariah authority "is to review our operations, supervise its development of Islamic products, and determine Shariah compliance of these products and our investments."
An important element of Shariah-compliant financing is a form of obligatory charitable contribution called zakat, which is a religious tax for assisting those that "struggle [jihad] for Allah." The amount of this tax is between
2.5% and 20%, depending upon the source of the wealth. The zakat religious tax is used to financially support Islamic "charities," some of which have ties to terrorist organizations that are hostile to the United States and
all other "infidels," which includes Christians and Jews.
The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, an example of an Islamic "charity" that qualifies for receipt of the zakat, was recently convicted by a federal jury for providing millions of dollars to Islamic terrorist organizations. As a direct consequence of the taxpayer funds appropriated and expended to purchase and financially support AIG, the
federal government is now the owner of a corporation engaged in the business of collecting religious taxes to fund interests adverse to the United States, Christians, Jews, and all other "infidels" under Islamic law.
The Thomas More Law Center defends and promotes America's Christian heritage and moral values, including the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life. It supports a strong national defense and an independent and sovereign United States of America. The Law Center accomplishes its mission through litigation, education, and related activities. It does not charge for its services. The Law Center is supported by contributions from individuals, corporations and foundations, and is recognized by the IRS as a section 501(c)(3) organization. You may reach the Thomas More Law Center at (734) 827-2001 or visit our website at ww.thomasmore.org.
Obama greets Abbas with a gift: "a toughly-worded, categorical US demand for Israel to stop settlements in Palestinian territories"
There was, of course, no corresponding gift to Netanyahu -- only challenges to make various accommodations.
"Obama, Abbas talk peace," by Farah Stockman for the Boston Globe, May 28 (thanks to James):
WASHINGTON -- President Obama received Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House today with a valuable welcoming gift: a toughly-worded, categorical US demand for Israel to stop settlements in Palestinian territories.
But hours before the two men met, the Israeli government flatly rejected the demand. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said that "normal life in those communities must be allowed to continue," meaning that some construction will continue in existing settlements.
Obama and Abbas appeared to see eye to eye, speaking of the need for increased support from Arab governments to support the peace process by showing good faith in their promise to recognize the existence of the Jewish state if Israel strikes a peace deal with Palestinians.
But nowhere was the confluence of views so striking as in the Obama administration's position on settlements, which the president outlined directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week at the White House.
After meeting with Abbas, Obama told reporters he stands firmly behind "core principles" toward peace, including a two-state solution, Israel "stopping settlements," and Palestinians preventing attacks on Israel.
"I am confident we can move this process forward," if all sides live up to prior obligations and negotiate in good faith, the president said.
And what makes him think that the Palestinians will do that when they have never done it before?
Comment: This group of Arabs has not honored one previous agreement. You know they will not begin now and will only demand the proverbial mile now that Obama has given an inch.
"Obama, Abbas talk peace," by Farah Stockman for the Boston Globe, May 28 (thanks to James):
WASHINGTON -- President Obama received Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House today with a valuable welcoming gift: a toughly-worded, categorical US demand for Israel to stop settlements in Palestinian territories.
But hours before the two men met, the Israeli government flatly rejected the demand. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said that "normal life in those communities must be allowed to continue," meaning that some construction will continue in existing settlements.
Obama and Abbas appeared to see eye to eye, speaking of the need for increased support from Arab governments to support the peace process by showing good faith in their promise to recognize the existence of the Jewish state if Israel strikes a peace deal with Palestinians.
But nowhere was the confluence of views so striking as in the Obama administration's position on settlements, which the president outlined directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week at the White House.
After meeting with Abbas, Obama told reporters he stands firmly behind "core principles" toward peace, including a two-state solution, Israel "stopping settlements," and Palestinians preventing attacks on Israel.
"I am confident we can move this process forward," if all sides live up to prior obligations and negotiate in good faith, the president said.
And what makes him think that the Palestinians will do that when they have never done it before?
Comment: This group of Arabs has not honored one previous agreement. You know they will not begin now and will only demand the proverbial mile now that Obama has given an inch.
Netanyahu: "What the ... do they want from me?"
Foreign Policy
Last night, shortly after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told journalists that the Obama administration "wants to see a stop to settlements -- not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a confidante. Referring to Clinton's call for a settlement freeze, Netanyahu groused, "What the hell do they want from me?" according to his associate, who added, "I gathered that he heard some bad vibes in his meetings with [U.S.] congressional delegations this week." In the 10 days since Netanyahu and President Barack Obama held a meeting at the White House, the Obama administration has made clear in public and private meetings with Israeli officials that it intends to hold a firm line on Obama's call to stop Israeli settlements. According to many observers in Washington and Israel, the Israeli prime minister, looking for loopholes and hidden agreements that have often existed in the past with Washington, has been flummoxed by an unusually united line that has come not just from Obama White House and the secretary of state, but also from pro-Israel congressmen and women who have come through Israel for meetings with him over Memorial Day recess. To Netanyahu's dismay, Obama doesn't appear to have a hidden policy. It is what he said it was.
"This is a sea change for Netanyahu," a former senior Clinton administration official who worked on Middle East issues said. The official said that the basis of the Obama White House's resolve is the conviction that it is in the United States' as well as Israel's interest to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "We have significant, existential threats that Israel faces from Iran and that the U.S. faces from this region. It is in our mutual interest to end this conflict, and to begin to build new regional alliances."
Netanyahu needed to engage Obama directly, the former official said. "Now that he has done so, and also sent a team of advisors to meet [special envoy to the Middle East George] Mitchell, he has very clearly received a message: ‘I meant what I said on settlements. No natural growth. No elasticity. There will be a clear settlement freeze.'" (Netanyahu sent a team of advisors including minister for intelligence Dan Meridor for meetings with Mitchell in London Monday.)
"Over the past 15 years, settlements have gone from being seen in Washington as an irritant, to the dominant issue," says Georgetown Univeristy Middle East expert Daniel Byman. He pointed out that key figures in the Obama administration -- Mitchell, who headed the Mitchell Commission, which recommended a halt to settlements; national security advisor Gen. Jim Jones -- see the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, home to some 290,000 people, as a key obstacle to getting a peace settlement. "I don't think the logic is hidden," Byman said.
It's not just the administration that's delivering Netanyahu that message, however. Whereas in the past Israeli leaders have sometimes eased pressure from Washington on the settlements issue by going to members of Congress, this time, observers in Washington and Israel say, key pro-Israel allies in Congress have been largely reinforcing the Obama team's message to Netanyahu. What changed? "Members of Congress have more willing to follow the leadership of the administration ... because [they] believe it is in our national security interest to move toward ending the conflict and that it is not a zero sum for Israel," the former senior Clinton administration official said.
"Netanyahu and [Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman are probing, looking for areas they can get space gratis from the United States," says Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force for Palestine. "And they are not finding it."
"We've been watching the move in Congress, especially among certain high profile Jewish American members -- people like Representative Gary Ackerman, Representative Robert Wexler, and Representative Howard Berman," Ibish said. "What has occurred -- and this has been greatly intensified by the election of Obama: There has been a growing sense of members of Congress who are well-informed on foreign policy ... that peace is essential to the American national interest and the Israeli national interest. And there's been a growing sense that the possibility of a two-state agreement is time-limited and that things like the settlements are incompatible with the goal of creating two states."
The changed dynamic in Washington has impressed Palestinian audiences. At a breakfast yesterday morning with Palestinian American policy hands near Pentagon City, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that he was extremely impressed with the Obama administration's resolve on policies that it sees as crucial for getting out of the current status quo -- after years of drift that have seen Jewish settlements expand to almost 300,000 people on land the Palestinians envision as part of a future Palestinian state.
Abbas had a private meeting with Obama at the White House this afternoon, followed by an expanded meeting in the Oval Office with Obama, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, Clinton, and other U.S. officials. "We are a stalwart ally of Israel and it is in our interests to assure that Israel is safe and secure," Obama said in a joint press conference with Abbas after the meeting. "It is our belief that the best way to achieve that is to create the conditions on the ground and set the stage for a Palestinian state as well.
"And so what I told Prime Minister Netanyahu was that each party has obligations under the road map," Obama continued. "On the Israeli side those obligations include stopping settlements. They include making sure that there is a viable potential Palestinian state. On the Palestinian side it's going to be important and necessary to continue to take the security steps on the West Bank that President Abbas has already begun to take, working with General Dayton. We've seen great progress in terms of security in the West Bank. Those security steps need to continue because Israel has to have some confidence that security in the West Bank is in place in order for us to advance this process."
Even one veteran Washington peacemaker who had grown skeptical that Washington can overcome obstacles to get substantive progress on Middle East peace admitted to being impressed by the Obama team's resolve. "What I'm beginning to see is that the Obama administration may be less concerned with actually getting to negotiations and an agreement and more interested in setting new rules and rearranging the furniture," said Aaron David Miller of the Woodrow Wilson Institute. "They may have concluded that they can't get to a real two state solution with this prime minister [Netanyahu]. Maybe they want a new one? And the best way to raise the odds of that is to demonstrate that he can't manage Israel's most important relationship: with the U.S."
Echoing language from the Bush administration's debate about policy to Iran, behavior change vs. regime change, Miller said the Obama administration's stance demanded "behavior change for sure" on the settlements issue. "If they keep pushing as the Secretary [Clinton] was last night, who knows about the other," he said. "The danger of course is that they raise the level on the settlements issue and then back off, leaving the emperor(ess) with no clothes. And this would make America look really bad."
Comment: The rules have changed and unless we counter Obamas foolish strategy we are in for some difficult times. Israel is about to be thrown under the bus.
Last night, shortly after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told journalists that the Obama administration "wants to see a stop to settlements -- not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a confidante. Referring to Clinton's call for a settlement freeze, Netanyahu groused, "What the hell do they want from me?" according to his associate, who added, "I gathered that he heard some bad vibes in his meetings with [U.S.] congressional delegations this week." In the 10 days since Netanyahu and President Barack Obama held a meeting at the White House, the Obama administration has made clear in public and private meetings with Israeli officials that it intends to hold a firm line on Obama's call to stop Israeli settlements. According to many observers in Washington and Israel, the Israeli prime minister, looking for loopholes and hidden agreements that have often existed in the past with Washington, has been flummoxed by an unusually united line that has come not just from Obama White House and the secretary of state, but also from pro-Israel congressmen and women who have come through Israel for meetings with him over Memorial Day recess. To Netanyahu's dismay, Obama doesn't appear to have a hidden policy. It is what he said it was.
"This is a sea change for Netanyahu," a former senior Clinton administration official who worked on Middle East issues said. The official said that the basis of the Obama White House's resolve is the conviction that it is in the United States' as well as Israel's interest to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "We have significant, existential threats that Israel faces from Iran and that the U.S. faces from this region. It is in our mutual interest to end this conflict, and to begin to build new regional alliances."
Netanyahu needed to engage Obama directly, the former official said. "Now that he has done so, and also sent a team of advisors to meet [special envoy to the Middle East George] Mitchell, he has very clearly received a message: ‘I meant what I said on settlements. No natural growth. No elasticity. There will be a clear settlement freeze.'" (Netanyahu sent a team of advisors including minister for intelligence Dan Meridor for meetings with Mitchell in London Monday.)
"Over the past 15 years, settlements have gone from being seen in Washington as an irritant, to the dominant issue," says Georgetown Univeristy Middle East expert Daniel Byman. He pointed out that key figures in the Obama administration -- Mitchell, who headed the Mitchell Commission, which recommended a halt to settlements; national security advisor Gen. Jim Jones -- see the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, home to some 290,000 people, as a key obstacle to getting a peace settlement. "I don't think the logic is hidden," Byman said.
It's not just the administration that's delivering Netanyahu that message, however. Whereas in the past Israeli leaders have sometimes eased pressure from Washington on the settlements issue by going to members of Congress, this time, observers in Washington and Israel say, key pro-Israel allies in Congress have been largely reinforcing the Obama team's message to Netanyahu. What changed? "Members of Congress have more willing to follow the leadership of the administration ... because [they] believe it is in our national security interest to move toward ending the conflict and that it is not a zero sum for Israel," the former senior Clinton administration official said.
"Netanyahu and [Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman are probing, looking for areas they can get space gratis from the United States," says Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force for Palestine. "And they are not finding it."
"We've been watching the move in Congress, especially among certain high profile Jewish American members -- people like Representative Gary Ackerman, Representative Robert Wexler, and Representative Howard Berman," Ibish said. "What has occurred -- and this has been greatly intensified by the election of Obama: There has been a growing sense of members of Congress who are well-informed on foreign policy ... that peace is essential to the American national interest and the Israeli national interest. And there's been a growing sense that the possibility of a two-state agreement is time-limited and that things like the settlements are incompatible with the goal of creating two states."
The changed dynamic in Washington has impressed Palestinian audiences. At a breakfast yesterday morning with Palestinian American policy hands near Pentagon City, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that he was extremely impressed with the Obama administration's resolve on policies that it sees as crucial for getting out of the current status quo -- after years of drift that have seen Jewish settlements expand to almost 300,000 people on land the Palestinians envision as part of a future Palestinian state.
Abbas had a private meeting with Obama at the White House this afternoon, followed by an expanded meeting in the Oval Office with Obama, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, Clinton, and other U.S. officials. "We are a stalwart ally of Israel and it is in our interests to assure that Israel is safe and secure," Obama said in a joint press conference with Abbas after the meeting. "It is our belief that the best way to achieve that is to create the conditions on the ground and set the stage for a Palestinian state as well.
"And so what I told Prime Minister Netanyahu was that each party has obligations under the road map," Obama continued. "On the Israeli side those obligations include stopping settlements. They include making sure that there is a viable potential Palestinian state. On the Palestinian side it's going to be important and necessary to continue to take the security steps on the West Bank that President Abbas has already begun to take, working with General Dayton. We've seen great progress in terms of security in the West Bank. Those security steps need to continue because Israel has to have some confidence that security in the West Bank is in place in order for us to advance this process."
Even one veteran Washington peacemaker who had grown skeptical that Washington can overcome obstacles to get substantive progress on Middle East peace admitted to being impressed by the Obama team's resolve. "What I'm beginning to see is that the Obama administration may be less concerned with actually getting to negotiations and an agreement and more interested in setting new rules and rearranging the furniture," said Aaron David Miller of the Woodrow Wilson Institute. "They may have concluded that they can't get to a real two state solution with this prime minister [Netanyahu]. Maybe they want a new one? And the best way to raise the odds of that is to demonstrate that he can't manage Israel's most important relationship: with the U.S."
Echoing language from the Bush administration's debate about policy to Iran, behavior change vs. regime change, Miller said the Obama administration's stance demanded "behavior change for sure" on the settlements issue. "If they keep pushing as the Secretary [Clinton] was last night, who knows about the other," he said. "The danger of course is that they raise the level on the settlements issue and then back off, leaving the emperor(ess) with no clothes. And this would make America look really bad."
Comment: The rules have changed and unless we counter Obamas foolish strategy we are in for some difficult times. Israel is about to be thrown under the bus.
UK school exercise: role play, or prayer to Allah?
A few years ago I was an expert witness in a case against the Byron Union School District in California, where public school students had been made to memorize and recite prayers and portions of the Qur'an, and to make affirmations of Islamic faith in the course of answering test questions -- questions would be worded "True or False: Muhammad is the messenger of Allah," instead of "True or false: Muslims believe that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah." But the parents who brought the suit lost the case; the court ruled that it was all just role play, a recognized pedagogical tool, and consequently was nothing to be concerned about.
The same controversy appears to be playing out in this case: was the teaching mandating prayer to Allah, or just leading students in a role-playing game? Officials here again say it was the latter, but some parents aren't so sure. And if it was just role play, why was the teacher fired?
"Teacher sacked after 'making pupils kneel and pray to Allah' during RE lesson," from the Daily Mail, May 29 (thanks to all who sent this in):
A teacher has been sacked after parents claimed that their children were forced to pray to Allah during a religious education lesson.
Alison Phillips was accused of giving two pupils detention after they refused to kneel down and 'pray to Allah' during the class.
However, an investigation by the school concluded that there was no truth in the allegation.
Parents were outraged after stories emerged that the two boys, aged 11, were allegedly punished for not wanting to take part in a practical demonstration of how Allah is worshipped.
They said children should not be forced to take part in the exercise, which included wearing Muslim headgear, was a breach of their human rights.
But governors at Alsager High School, near Stoke-on-Trent, denied Mrs Phillips made pupils pray or that two boys were put into detention for refusing to do so.
The school suspended the teacher last July after receiving complaints and a lengthy disciplinary process was carried out.
A statement released on behalf of the school by Cheshire East Council said: 'It can be confirmed that following a long and rigorous disciplinary process, a member of staff at Alsager School has been dismissed from her post.
'The member of staff was suspended in July 2008 following parental complaints and newspaper reports relating to an RE lesson.
'In reaching this decision, the governing body wish to make very clear that they were completely satisfied that at no point did that member of staff make children pray to Allah or put boys in detention for refusing to do so.
'The RE lesson in question contains an element of role play which complies with acceptable practice.'
At the time of the alleged incident, one parent - Sharon Luinen, said: 'This isn't right, it's taking things too far.
'Being asked to pray to Allah, who isn't who they worship, is wrong and what got me is that came away thinking they were being disrespectful.'
Another parent, Karen Williams, said: 'I am absolutely furious and I don't find it acceptable.
'I haven't got a problem with them teaching my child other religions and a small amount of information doesn't do any harm.
'But not only did they have to pray, the teacher had gone into the class and asked them watch a short film and then said "we are now going out to pray to Allah".'
The grandfather of one of the pupils in the class added: 'It's absolutely disgusting, there's no other way of putting it.'
Parents had claimed that their children were made to bend down on their knees on prayer mats which the teacher had got out of her cupboard.
The same controversy appears to be playing out in this case: was the teaching mandating prayer to Allah, or just leading students in a role-playing game? Officials here again say it was the latter, but some parents aren't so sure. And if it was just role play, why was the teacher fired?
"Teacher sacked after 'making pupils kneel and pray to Allah' during RE lesson," from the Daily Mail, May 29 (thanks to all who sent this in):
A teacher has been sacked after parents claimed that their children were forced to pray to Allah during a religious education lesson.
Alison Phillips was accused of giving two pupils detention after they refused to kneel down and 'pray to Allah' during the class.
However, an investigation by the school concluded that there was no truth in the allegation.
Parents were outraged after stories emerged that the two boys, aged 11, were allegedly punished for not wanting to take part in a practical demonstration of how Allah is worshipped.
They said children should not be forced to take part in the exercise, which included wearing Muslim headgear, was a breach of their human rights.
But governors at Alsager High School, near Stoke-on-Trent, denied Mrs Phillips made pupils pray or that two boys were put into detention for refusing to do so.
The school suspended the teacher last July after receiving complaints and a lengthy disciplinary process was carried out.
A statement released on behalf of the school by Cheshire East Council said: 'It can be confirmed that following a long and rigorous disciplinary process, a member of staff at Alsager School has been dismissed from her post.
'The member of staff was suspended in July 2008 following parental complaints and newspaper reports relating to an RE lesson.
'In reaching this decision, the governing body wish to make very clear that they were completely satisfied that at no point did that member of staff make children pray to Allah or put boys in detention for refusing to do so.
'The RE lesson in question contains an element of role play which complies with acceptable practice.'
At the time of the alleged incident, one parent - Sharon Luinen, said: 'This isn't right, it's taking things too far.
'Being asked to pray to Allah, who isn't who they worship, is wrong and what got me is that came away thinking they were being disrespectful.'
Another parent, Karen Williams, said: 'I am absolutely furious and I don't find it acceptable.
'I haven't got a problem with them teaching my child other religions and a small amount of information doesn't do any harm.
'But not only did they have to pray, the teacher had gone into the class and asked them watch a short film and then said "we are now going out to pray to Allah".'
The grandfather of one of the pupils in the class added: 'It's absolutely disgusting, there's no other way of putting it.'
Parents had claimed that their children were made to bend down on their knees on prayer mats which the teacher had got out of her cupboard.
Moussa: Halt all settlement construction
Associated Press , THE JERUSALEM POST
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said Friday it will become impossible to establish a Palestinian state unless Israel halts settlement construction in the West Bank immediately.
Moussa said the population in the West Bank is changing rapidly as the Israelis continue to build, making a two-state solution more unlikely as time goes by.
"If they continue this policy of changing the demographic composition ... of the territories, it will be practically impossible to establish a Palestinian state - a viable Palestinian state," Moussa said. "This is the point that makes or breaks."
His comments came a day after US President Barack Obama met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and also called for a halt to the settlements, while urging the Palestinians to be more accepting of their Israeli neighbors.
Israel, however, has rejected US requests to freeze the construction in the West Bank, a territory that would make up the Palestinian state, along with the Gaza Strip, as part of a broader peace deal.
Moussa expressed cautious optimism in the Obama White House, noting that its approach toward Israel appears to be more "blunt" than that of preceding administrations. He said US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's strongly worded call for a stop to the settlements earlier this week was "a welcome change."
Clinton said Wednesday the halt to construction should include "natural growth." Israel uses that term for new housing and other construction that it says will accommodate the growth of families already living in existing settlements.
Moussa also welcomed Obama's upcoming trip to Egypt, where he plans to discuss his country's outreach to Muslims around the world and contributions of Muslims in the United States in a speech June 4. Obama also said he would discuss the broader need for peace in the Middle East and common understanding among nations.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1243346503349&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
Comment: This is expected, of course the Arab League is going to promote the freeze. Notice it does not offer any aide, nor does it provide any future assistance-until the USA says Israel can have natural growth within the existing towns, this rhetoric will be amped up. As I write rest assured that the Arab League is and has approached the EU dhimmis and is applying pressure on them to also amp up the rhetoric on Israel. The Arabs sense an opening, they smeel blood in the water so to speak and like a shark they are going after their prey.
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said Friday it will become impossible to establish a Palestinian state unless Israel halts settlement construction in the West Bank immediately.
Moussa said the population in the West Bank is changing rapidly as the Israelis continue to build, making a two-state solution more unlikely as time goes by.
"If they continue this policy of changing the demographic composition ... of the territories, it will be practically impossible to establish a Palestinian state - a viable Palestinian state," Moussa said. "This is the point that makes or breaks."
His comments came a day after US President Barack Obama met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and also called for a halt to the settlements, while urging the Palestinians to be more accepting of their Israeli neighbors.
Israel, however, has rejected US requests to freeze the construction in the West Bank, a territory that would make up the Palestinian state, along with the Gaza Strip, as part of a broader peace deal.
Moussa expressed cautious optimism in the Obama White House, noting that its approach toward Israel appears to be more "blunt" than that of preceding administrations. He said US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's strongly worded call for a stop to the settlements earlier this week was "a welcome change."
Clinton said Wednesday the halt to construction should include "natural growth." Israel uses that term for new housing and other construction that it says will accommodate the growth of families already living in existing settlements.
Moussa also welcomed Obama's upcoming trip to Egypt, where he plans to discuss his country's outreach to Muslims around the world and contributions of Muslims in the United States in a speech June 4. Obama also said he would discuss the broader need for peace in the Middle East and common understanding among nations.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1243346503349&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
Comment: This is expected, of course the Arab League is going to promote the freeze. Notice it does not offer any aide, nor does it provide any future assistance-until the USA says Israel can have natural growth within the existing towns, this rhetoric will be amped up. As I write rest assured that the Arab League is and has approached the EU dhimmis and is applying pressure on them to also amp up the rhetoric on Israel. The Arabs sense an opening, they smeel blood in the water so to speak and like a shark they are going after their prey.
Nasrallah: Iran will 'gladly' supply Hizbullah with arms
JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST
Leading up to Lebanese elections on June 7, Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah called Friday for unity in the country, and asserted that the terrorist group "cannot be disarmed by force."
Speaking at the 'Resistance and Liberation Festival,' marking nine years since Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon, Nasrallah said that were Hizbullah to win the upcoming election, it would "strengthen and arm the [Lebanese] army, and empower it with defense of Lebanon."
Iran, he added, would "gladly supply it."
In a speech which was broadcast on local television stations and attracted crowds in the hundred thousands over Beirut, he called for "a national unity government, with cooperation based on lessons from the past."
Nasrallah went on to claim that Israel's former foreign minister Silvan Shalom had "said that [Israel] would turn the international community against Hizbullah… and place us on their list of terror organizations."
Though Israel remains a on "dangerous challenge" facing the group, he said, "the option of another conflict is still far off… though it does exist."
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1243346502814&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
Comment: You cannot have it both ways-either reduce terror ability, announce full partnership in negotiating peace but discontinue war against Israel. If you were Israel and understood that Iran has now stated it will continue arming Hizzbollah, our northern border enemy, you would do what?
Leading up to Lebanese elections on June 7, Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah called Friday for unity in the country, and asserted that the terrorist group "cannot be disarmed by force."
Speaking at the 'Resistance and Liberation Festival,' marking nine years since Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon, Nasrallah said that were Hizbullah to win the upcoming election, it would "strengthen and arm the [Lebanese] army, and empower it with defense of Lebanon."
Iran, he added, would "gladly supply it."
In a speech which was broadcast on local television stations and attracted crowds in the hundred thousands over Beirut, he called for "a national unity government, with cooperation based on lessons from the past."
Nasrallah went on to claim that Israel's former foreign minister Silvan Shalom had "said that [Israel] would turn the international community against Hizbullah… and place us on their list of terror organizations."
Though Israel remains a on "dangerous challenge" facing the group, he said, "the option of another conflict is still far off… though it does exist."
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1243346502814&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
Comment: You cannot have it both ways-either reduce terror ability, announce full partnership in negotiating peace but discontinue war against Israel. If you were Israel and understood that Iran has now stated it will continue arming Hizzbollah, our northern border enemy, you would do what?
Friday, May 29, 2009
What Would Happen if Israel Attacked Iran?
Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed
Asharq Alawsat
The answer that summarizes everything is that no one can do much more than sit in front of the television screens, and watch the red skies. Naturally, this applies to the Tunisian or Mauritanian citizen, for instance, who is far away from the battle field; however, there are large engagement areas that will be threatened with involvement unwillingly by either of the two warring sides, such as the Gulf, Iraq, Palestine, and perhaps beyond these countries.
However, the first question is: Does Israel actually intend to attack Iran, or is it merely political saber rattling? I think that this time the threats are more serious than at any previous time. I do not exclude that the war might erupt after the end of the time limit given by the United States to the Iranians to reach a political solution for the nuclear problem, a time limit that is said to end by the end of the year.
The Israelis consider that Iran's possession of a nuclear bomb is an issue of life-and-death, and will fight with everything they have got regardless of the consequences for them or the others. The Israelis believe that Iran might use its nuclear weapons against them; this is contrary to the case with Pakistan, which today possesses a nuclear arsenal of more than 60 nuclear weapons, but Israel has not protested against it.
It is not sufficient merely to know the intentions of Israel, but it is also important to understand the US stance, which increasingly accepts at least a military attack, but not a major war, against Iran after Tehran has got very close - as it is circulating -to having enough fuel to build its own nuclear weapon.
Now, let us go back to the title of the article; what can we do?
If Israel attacks Iran this will mean that Iran will strike right and left: the US ships in the Gulf, the Gulf oil installations, and the US military bases. Naturally Iran will launch a tirade of its missiles against Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, as Saddam Hussein did in the war to liberate Kuwait.
The reason, in my opinion, is that Iran knows that it will not achieve a military victory, because it has neither the offensive nor the defensive capabilities that can protect it from the harm of the US-supported Israeli aggression. However, Iran will resort to inflicting damage in every direction so that it would be able to declare a propaganda victory, the same as Hezbollah did in the summer war against Israel, and Hamas did in the winter war against Israel.
Here, there will be nothing that can be done unless Iran goes further by targeting the Gulf countries in an intensive way through its sleeper terrorist cells, and by targeting the vital centers through missile strikes. A deliberate and continuous action by Iran most probably will compel these countries to join the war.
Some people might think that the Gulf countries are a foregone conclusion as an Iranian target because of the US military bases on their territories, such as Qatar; the US fleets in their harbors, such as in Bahrain; the explicit protection treaties, such as with Kuwait; and over and above all the GCC joint defense agreement among the GCC countries, which means that an attack against any member country will lead to collective war.
The only possibility for the war to remain limited is if Iran restricts itself to replying to Israel, but I rule out this possibility to a great extent.
As for why do we talk today about war, and not peace? This is because we cannot see anything other than the end of the aspired for peaceful solution that preserves for Iran its right to obtain nuclear energy, and protects the region, and not only Israel, from the evil of Iran's possession of nuclear weapons.
span>
Asharq Alawsat
The answer that summarizes everything is that no one can do much more than sit in front of the television screens, and watch the red skies. Naturally, this applies to the Tunisian or Mauritanian citizen, for instance, who is far away from the battle field; however, there are large engagement areas that will be threatened with involvement unwillingly by either of the two warring sides, such as the Gulf, Iraq, Palestine, and perhaps beyond these countries.
However, the first question is: Does Israel actually intend to attack Iran, or is it merely political saber rattling? I think that this time the threats are more serious than at any previous time. I do not exclude that the war might erupt after the end of the time limit given by the United States to the Iranians to reach a political solution for the nuclear problem, a time limit that is said to end by the end of the year.
The Israelis consider that Iran's possession of a nuclear bomb is an issue of life-and-death, and will fight with everything they have got regardless of the consequences for them or the others. The Israelis believe that Iran might use its nuclear weapons against them; this is contrary to the case with Pakistan, which today possesses a nuclear arsenal of more than 60 nuclear weapons, but Israel has not protested against it.
It is not sufficient merely to know the intentions of Israel, but it is also important to understand the US stance, which increasingly accepts at least a military attack, but not a major war, against Iran after Tehran has got very close - as it is circulating -to having enough fuel to build its own nuclear weapon.
Now, let us go back to the title of the article; what can we do?
If Israel attacks Iran this will mean that Iran will strike right and left: the US ships in the Gulf, the Gulf oil installations, and the US military bases. Naturally Iran will launch a tirade of its missiles against Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, as Saddam Hussein did in the war to liberate Kuwait.
The reason, in my opinion, is that Iran knows that it will not achieve a military victory, because it has neither the offensive nor the defensive capabilities that can protect it from the harm of the US-supported Israeli aggression. However, Iran will resort to inflicting damage in every direction so that it would be able to declare a propaganda victory, the same as Hezbollah did in the summer war against Israel, and Hamas did in the winter war against Israel.
Here, there will be nothing that can be done unless Iran goes further by targeting the Gulf countries in an intensive way through its sleeper terrorist cells, and by targeting the vital centers through missile strikes. A deliberate and continuous action by Iran most probably will compel these countries to join the war.
Some people might think that the Gulf countries are a foregone conclusion as an Iranian target because of the US military bases on their territories, such as Qatar; the US fleets in their harbors, such as in Bahrain; the explicit protection treaties, such as with Kuwait; and over and above all the GCC joint defense agreement among the GCC countries, which means that an attack against any member country will lead to collective war.
The only possibility for the war to remain limited is if Iran restricts itself to replying to Israel, but I rule out this possibility to a great extent.
As for why do we talk today about war, and not peace? This is because we cannot see anything other than the end of the aspired for peaceful solution that preserves for Iran its right to obtain nuclear energy, and protects the region, and not only Israel, from the evil of Iran's possession of nuclear weapons.
span>
Obama's Uncle: He's Using Buchenwald for Political Purpose
Barack Obama's great uncle offered some blunt language as to why his nephew is visiting the memorial at the former Buchenwald concentration camp next week during his trip to Europe and the Middle East. This is a trip that he chose, not because of me I'm sure, but for political reasons,” Charles Payne told the German magazine Spiegel. “Perhaps his visit also has something to do with improving his standing with (German Chancellor) Angela Merkel. She gave him a hard time during his campaign and also afterwards.”
Obama will visit Saudi Arabia, make a long-awaited speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, travel to Dresden and the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp in Germany, and attend D-Day commemorations in France. His uncle said he'd love to tag along if he gets a lift on Air Force One.
Payne, 84, is no stranger to Americans: The Obama campaign used his WWII experiences last year to burnish the candidate’s all-American upbringing. But Obama made a gaffe when he said his great uncle liberated Auschwitz. In fact, Payne was part of the force that liberated Ohrdruf, a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp, in April 1945.
Payne told Spiegel that he was shocked to see his war experience, especially his "liberation" of a concentration camp, used in campaign commercials. He said he had never spoken with his nephew about the matter, nor did Obama ever express any interest in Payne's experience.
“I was quite surprised when the whole thing came up and Barack talked about my war experiences in Nazi Germany,” Payne said. “We had never talked about that before.”
Payne doesn’t know where Obama came up with the fictitious Auschwitz connection.
“He couldn't have gotten it from me since we had never talked about this particular episode in the war,” said Payne. “My sister and her husband were both great storytellers and sometimes made up the details to go along with it.
“They told him about my deployment with the 89th Infantry Division and apparently they mixed up a few details,” Payne said. “Of course it came out immediately that he was wrong since there are enough people in America who know that Auschwitz is in the East and that the camp was liberated by the Red Army.”
After the mistake was made, Obama called Payne to get the correct details.
“He wanted to know where this camp was that I had helped liberate,” Payne said. “I told him that it was Ohrdruf and that it was a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. I described a little bit of what I had seen.”
Payne stressed that he has no political ax to grind. He is a life-long Democrat, but said he isn’t particularly close to his famous relative.
“Our relationship is warm and friendly, but I'm not part of his inner circle. We always have an interesting chat when we get in the same room together. He doesn't call me up and ask what I have to say about world policy or anything. And I never offer my opinions on any of this.”
In the article, Payne described an incident very similar to what many members of the “Greatest Generation” had experienced. A young man from Kansas, he had little knowledge of the world and few opinions about Germany or foreign policy in general before landing in Europe for the liberation.
“Everybody who was able-bodied was drafted,” Payne recalled. “I went down right at the time I graduated and told the lady that ran the Selective Service office. I said, ‘I'm ready to go,’ and she said: ‘Don't you worry about it, honey. You're on the list.’ Since I had been colorblind since birth, I was first turned down by the Air Force, then by the Navy and the Marines. Only the Army didn't care and put me into the infantry.”
Raised in Kansas, Payne did his basic training at North Camp Hood, Texas.
“What did you think about the Germans at the time?” Spiegel asked him.
“I am unable to tell you what I was thinking then. That was a long time ago, and as I told you, until Barack misspoke, I hadn't thought about any of this for a very, very long time,” Payne said.
“They were the enemy, evil incarnate, and we were the good guys coming to save the world. We were all for the war. We all wanted to be in it. That doesn't mean we enjoyed being in it, though,” he said. He then described his experiences in Europe.
“At first there was no front,” he said. “Because there were no facilities for our ship, we couldn't anchor in the harbor. Le Havre had been summarily bombed. They finally took us off in the middle of the night on landing barges. It was bitter cold and snowing. There was about three or four inches of water sloshing around in the bottom. So we landed at Le Havre in bitter cold with wet feet. Soon afterwards we had a large number of people who suffered from frostbite. The camp doctors were forced to amputate fingers, toes, and feet and send these soldiers back to the United States. For them the war was over.
“Ohrdruf was in that string of towns going across, south of Gotha and Erfurt,” Payne said, describing his arrival near the concentration camp. “Our division was the first one in there. When we arrived there were no German soldiers anywhere around that I knew about. There was no fighting with the Germans, no camp guards. The whole area was overrun by people from the camp dressed in the most pitiful rags, and most of them were in a bad state of starvation. The first thing I saw was a dead body lying square in the middle of the front gate.
“Inside the gate was an area where a bunch of the camp inmates had been machine gunned and were all lying on the ground,” Payne continued. “Each one had their tin cup in their hand or lying next to them.”
The interviewer asked him to describe his feelings when he was "confronted with these images.”
Payne said he doesn’t like to think about it, and hadn’t for a long time until Obama’s gaffe caused all the harsh memories of that time to come back in force.
“You know, I am unable to tell you what I was thinking then,” Payne said. “That was a long time ago, and as I told you, until Barack misspoke, I hadn't thought about any of this for a very, very long time. In fact, I guess I prefer not to think about it. I can assure you I was horrified by the lengths to which men will go to mistreat other men. This was, to me, almost unbelievable. There was more: There were sheds full of dead bodies that had been stripped and thrown in and then stacked up on top of each other. I don't know how many, but many high and the whole length of the room. They sprinkled lime to keep the smell down. That's about the extent that I remember actually seeing.
“I am puzzled by intelligent people who stand by and allow their country to be taken over and run by extreme radical types,” Payne said. “I'm still somewhat puzzled by that. And I am fully aware that it could happen and has almost happened in this country. You know, I lived through the McCarthy era in the 1950s, when it was getting dangerously close to that sort of thing.”
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Obama will visit Saudi Arabia, make a long-awaited speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, travel to Dresden and the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp in Germany, and attend D-Day commemorations in France. His uncle said he'd love to tag along if he gets a lift on Air Force One.
Payne, 84, is no stranger to Americans: The Obama campaign used his WWII experiences last year to burnish the candidate’s all-American upbringing. But Obama made a gaffe when he said his great uncle liberated Auschwitz. In fact, Payne was part of the force that liberated Ohrdruf, a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp, in April 1945.
Payne told Spiegel that he was shocked to see his war experience, especially his "liberation" of a concentration camp, used in campaign commercials. He said he had never spoken with his nephew about the matter, nor did Obama ever express any interest in Payne's experience.
“I was quite surprised when the whole thing came up and Barack talked about my war experiences in Nazi Germany,” Payne said. “We had never talked about that before.”
Payne doesn’t know where Obama came up with the fictitious Auschwitz connection.
“He couldn't have gotten it from me since we had never talked about this particular episode in the war,” said Payne. “My sister and her husband were both great storytellers and sometimes made up the details to go along with it.
“They told him about my deployment with the 89th Infantry Division and apparently they mixed up a few details,” Payne said. “Of course it came out immediately that he was wrong since there are enough people in America who know that Auschwitz is in the East and that the camp was liberated by the Red Army.”
After the mistake was made, Obama called Payne to get the correct details.
“He wanted to know where this camp was that I had helped liberate,” Payne said. “I told him that it was Ohrdruf and that it was a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. I described a little bit of what I had seen.”
Payne stressed that he has no political ax to grind. He is a life-long Democrat, but said he isn’t particularly close to his famous relative.
“Our relationship is warm and friendly, but I'm not part of his inner circle. We always have an interesting chat when we get in the same room together. He doesn't call me up and ask what I have to say about world policy or anything. And I never offer my opinions on any of this.”
In the article, Payne described an incident very similar to what many members of the “Greatest Generation” had experienced. A young man from Kansas, he had little knowledge of the world and few opinions about Germany or foreign policy in general before landing in Europe for the liberation.
“Everybody who was able-bodied was drafted,” Payne recalled. “I went down right at the time I graduated and told the lady that ran the Selective Service office. I said, ‘I'm ready to go,’ and she said: ‘Don't you worry about it, honey. You're on the list.’ Since I had been colorblind since birth, I was first turned down by the Air Force, then by the Navy and the Marines. Only the Army didn't care and put me into the infantry.”
Raised in Kansas, Payne did his basic training at North Camp Hood, Texas.
“What did you think about the Germans at the time?” Spiegel asked him.
“I am unable to tell you what I was thinking then. That was a long time ago, and as I told you, until Barack misspoke, I hadn't thought about any of this for a very, very long time,” Payne said.
“They were the enemy, evil incarnate, and we were the good guys coming to save the world. We were all for the war. We all wanted to be in it. That doesn't mean we enjoyed being in it, though,” he said. He then described his experiences in Europe.
“At first there was no front,” he said. “Because there were no facilities for our ship, we couldn't anchor in the harbor. Le Havre had been summarily bombed. They finally took us off in the middle of the night on landing barges. It was bitter cold and snowing. There was about three or four inches of water sloshing around in the bottom. So we landed at Le Havre in bitter cold with wet feet. Soon afterwards we had a large number of people who suffered from frostbite. The camp doctors were forced to amputate fingers, toes, and feet and send these soldiers back to the United States. For them the war was over.
“Ohrdruf was in that string of towns going across, south of Gotha and Erfurt,” Payne said, describing his arrival near the concentration camp. “Our division was the first one in there. When we arrived there were no German soldiers anywhere around that I knew about. There was no fighting with the Germans, no camp guards. The whole area was overrun by people from the camp dressed in the most pitiful rags, and most of them were in a bad state of starvation. The first thing I saw was a dead body lying square in the middle of the front gate.
“Inside the gate was an area where a bunch of the camp inmates had been machine gunned and were all lying on the ground,” Payne continued. “Each one had their tin cup in their hand or lying next to them.”
The interviewer asked him to describe his feelings when he was "confronted with these images.”
Payne said he doesn’t like to think about it, and hadn’t for a long time until Obama’s gaffe caused all the harsh memories of that time to come back in force.
“You know, I am unable to tell you what I was thinking then,” Payne said. “That was a long time ago, and as I told you, until Barack misspoke, I hadn't thought about any of this for a very, very long time. In fact, I guess I prefer not to think about it. I can assure you I was horrified by the lengths to which men will go to mistreat other men. This was, to me, almost unbelievable. There was more: There were sheds full of dead bodies that had been stripped and thrown in and then stacked up on top of each other. I don't know how many, but many high and the whole length of the room. They sprinkled lime to keep the smell down. That's about the extent that I remember actually seeing.
“I am puzzled by intelligent people who stand by and allow their country to be taken over and run by extreme radical types,” Payne said. “I'm still somewhat puzzled by that. And I am fully aware that it could happen and has almost happened in this country. You know, I lived through the McCarthy era in the 1950s, when it was getting dangerously close to that sort of thing.”
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
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